The Unforgettable Fire
by Lilyrose55
Summary: "Her stomach clenched as she entered his neighborhood in Queens and the knot kept tightening as she approached his street. She needed him more than he has ever needed her. That's what she's been admitting to herself these past months, since he left." EO, angsty, Rated MA.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note:** This story was published on SVUfiction and now I'm posting it on here, as that site sadly died. The fic takes place after S12, I hope you enjoy it.

EO's unforgettable fire and U2's 1984 album bearing the same name, that was mostly what I listened to as I wrote this story, gave it its name. My thanks go to Michelle and Jenna who were my betas and to PushTheButton for the avi.

**Chapter 1:**

She sees them in there. She can't tell who's who because all she can see are moving figures, but she sees them. Self-loathing, Olivia intends to start the car. She is sick of watching other people's lives and families through windows. She knows perfectly well what made her drive all the way to Queens tonight after fighting the urge for weeks and weeks. But she planned to knock on his door and not sit in the car like some kind of stalker and look over at the house or through the window.

Only she couldn't make it to the door.

Her stomach clenched as she entered his neighborhood and the knot kept tightening when she approached his street. When she pulled over at the sidewalk across from Elliot's house and noticed his Jeep parked in the street, her heart stopped beating for a minute. All the courage she had when she stormed out of her apartment, deciding that she was going to make him talk to her, abandoned her and she was left numb, unable to move. She was barely able to kill the engine.

She's been sitting there for nearly ten minutes. When her numbness disappeared she missed it, because it was hell of a lot better than having tears blurring her sight as she gazed over to the house. The light is on in what she knows is the living room and the kitchen and through the curtains she can see three people moving, walking back and forth in the kitchen and in the living room. Dinner, family, Elliot. Her scattered thoughts didn't allow her to form a decision, so she just kept sitting there.

She can still feel the pang. Sometimes the grief and that hollow feeling of loss take over her. Sometimes it's the anger. She managed to keep her focus on the job and she even almost got over talking to Elliot in her head when she's trying to crack a suspect or when she feels she's missing something in a case. She has learned to work with Rollins and Amaro, kind of, though she relies on Fin much more. Then again, there are moments when she is out of it. When she misses him so much. When she stares across her desk and doesn't meet his blue eyes, when she wants someone to perfectly understand what she means without her having to waste too many, or any, words to utter it. When she has to adjust herself to someone's stride because it's not automatically in sync. When she physically aches to smell that mix of cologne and masculinity, this specific scent that is only his.

This. This void is what made her leave her apartment tonight and drive all the way over here. Oh, yes, she scorns herself, there is also the fact that despite her many calls and messages, despite her desperation to talk to him, he has never bothered to say a word to her. He has never bothered to call her back, has never explained, never said goodbye, perhaps he has never cared. And she doesn't know how to undo it now. Maybe she just needs to accept that she can't.

A loud bark startles her and her hands clutch the steering wheel. Her head snaps to the other side and she sees a man walking his dog, passing right next to her parked car. Olivia rubs her face with both her hands, wiping the tears that uninterruptedly slid down her cheeks, paving salt and mascara paths down her chin and neck, staining the collar of her beige shirt. She then starts the engine and thanks the numbness that takes over again as she starts driving away.

He didn't need her.

She needed him more than he has ever needed her. That's what she's been admitting to herself these past months. There was a time when she and the job were all he had. And while she kept reminding him that he always had his kids and even though she hated to see him cracking as his marriage dissolved, she realized it was the first time that he was like her. He needed her more then, she was his constant like he has always been hers, she rooted him like he has always rooted her, she could do things for him and he sought her out more. He was there for her. When she came back from Oregon, it took him a while, but he learned again to rely on her and it was up to her to keep them at a distance, afraid to become too dependent on him. And she was right to be on her guard. Because when he moved back home she withered inside for a while. His head was up his ass, focusing on rebuilding his marriage, he was unreachable, and it suddenly left her hanging, bare, alone.

She had a terrible year, the year his son was born. Harris and Sealview happened that year, she was rejected for adoption and the relationships she had weren't worth shit. She kept to herself, not telling him about Harris, about Kurt, she didn't even want to tell him about the adoption failure. She kept him away, while she shamelessly made his business her own. In a way she preferred that, it was better than admitting that she needed him.

But she does.

When he hugged her in that corridor, outside the room his wife and newborn son rested in, she knew he had found her again, that he had never been gone, that they needed to find another way to be. But then and in the few times he's held her since, she had to force herself away from his arms, because she had to break away from his grip over her life. She was afraid that she wouldn't be able to take it anymore. She loves him and she can't have him and she knows that.

Like on autopilot she parks the car and climbs up the stairs to her apartment. She fumbles to find her keys. When Olivia closes the door behind her, she stands facing it for a moment in the dark. She doesn't bother to switch the lights on, the darkness suits her now. Slowly turning around and leaning against the door for support, she feels the tears start to overflow again. Her body slides down along the door, her knees buckle beneath her and she finally sits down on the floor with her head and back leaning against her apartment's closed door. She bends her knees and holds her stomach as the uncontrollable sobs leave her chest and rock her entire body.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note**: If you like case-heavy fics, this isn't the one for you. The case here is only in the background for the real story – EO :) Also, as you read this chapter, pls remember this was written 2 yrs ago...

**Chapter 2:**

The sunlight that creeps through the blinds falls on her face. Olivia stirs in her bed, trying to cling on to sleep, reluctant to let the day in. Her face is squashed against the cover that she didn't bother to take off the bed last night. Same as she didn't bother to take her clothes off. In fact, when she finally opens her eyes to the dimly lit room, she realizes she can't even remember getting into bed, or onto the bed actually.

Sighing, she sits up slowly, pushing her hair out of her face and throwing a weary glance at the alarm clock on the night stand. It's almost 06:30. She snaps herself out of bed and treads towards the bathroom, grabbing on her way a clean pair of panties from the top drawer of the dresser. _A shower_. This is her only aim. To stand under the water, let it run over her face and body, cleanse the mascara paths, wash away the weariness, the confusion, the pain.

Thirty minutes later, she is locking the front door behind her. Fin is already in her ear, telling her not to go to the precinct but rather meet him at the scene instead. Another scene, another victim, another ruined life she has to deal with. She lost count long ago.

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"Wait. What did you say Karen Briggs saw the night before she was raped?" Olivia is now sitting at her desk, scanning through a case file and looking at the computer screen at the same time.

Fin is at his desk, moving around files and documents looking for the one Olivia is asking about. She takes another sip from her third coffee cup for this morning as she's waiting for him to find it.

"Red bike parked outside her building. She thought they belonged to the new neighbor that recently moved in," Fin reads out.

"Fin, I have a red bike in Brenda's case. Brand new ones." Olivia is looking at him questionably.

He shrugs before answering. "We don't have much to go with, won't hurt to go over it with the other two vics and see if they remember anything about a bike."

"Who interviewed Karen Briggs?" Olivia asks with her head buried in the file in front of her again.

Fin hesitates enough to make Olivia raise her head to look at him. "Elliot." He tells her and gives her this soft look that makes her feel like she's a goddamn child.

She rolls her eyes. "Here, let me, I'll go over it, see if I can find more similarities. Why don't you call Cheryl and Dona and see if there's any memory of a bike there?"

Fin hands over the file to her, still eyeing her with that strange, soft gaze, his lips pressed together, like he's trying to hold back whatever it is he wants to tell her.

Going over the pages in the Briggs file, Olivia reads again the ER report and the rape kit details. She then flips to the form that contains Elliot's familiar handwriting. It's been long enough that she's seen enough of these after he left. She focuses on what he wrote and tries to ignore the little triangles scribbled at the margins of the page which he probably did while waiting on the line for something. She tries to ignore the faded ring of a coffee cup stain. She can vividly see him sitting at his desk, across from hers, playing with his pen, knocking it against the phone as he's waiting on the line, or leaning all the way back in his chair with his tie loosened and his feet up on the table, looking at her amused.

"Liv." Fin shakes her out of it.

"Yeah?"

"Cheryl. Red bike. Two days before her attack. She even congratulated her next door's neighbor kid for getting it for her birthday."

"Ok. Now we just need to find a pair of brand new red bikes in Manhattan. Piece of cake." She smiles.

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_Red bike._ That sent them on a wild goose chase alright. Well, at least they had Amaro and Rollins do most of it for them.

Olivia rests her head back on the sofa, balancing a glass of wine in her hands so it won't spill out when she's lying down. She arrived home today way too early for her liking. She stayed behind the others, going over the database trying to find more similarities between their current cases and the Briggs and Foster cases from almost a year ago. Rollins was the only exception, she also stayed behind. She always does. When Amanda started being too friendly, she realized it was time to go home. It's not that she doesn't like her, she does, but she wasn't up to chatting. Not with that nervous twist in her stomach, that goddamn twitch that made her wring her fingers every now and then and shift in her seat.

When she dropped her bag on the kitchen counter and kicked her shoes off, and especially when she took that glass of wine with her to the living room, she started to feel a bit more relaxed. But it kept bugging her. So she tried to lie down, hoping that her fatigue would help with that calming-down thing she wasn't good at. She's still waiting.

Eventually, Olivia sits back up. She takes one last sip from her wine glass and stands up, almost possessed. She doesn't want to think about what she's doing, she just wants to go over there. She's gonna knock on that door tonight. She will. She will. She has to. He can't shut her out like that. He can't tell her with this goddamn silence that all these years didn't matter, that everything they went through wasn't worth anything at all. _Partners for better and for worse, my ass,_ she angrily thinks as she shoves her feet back into her boots and almost violently grabs her purse from the counter.

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She lost her courage again. Before even starting the car. She decided to leave it parked and walk somewhere else. To take the edge off.

She can smell the whiskey and the beer in his breath as he is leaning in his bar stool towards her. He is balding and his face has lost that childlike quality. It's been 11 years since she last saw him, and Brian still seems somewhat too young and gentle for her. The guys at the squad mentioned meeting him at that bar the other day, telling her that he asked about her. And about Elliot.

Brian has had a few drinks already. So has she. They've covered his work in Burglary, which he seems to like because it requires his brain much more than his heart. She killed the conversation about the squad rather quickly and they have been sitting quietly, trying to come up with things to talk about.

She looks around, it's not her usual bar. This one is a bit more stylish. It's the kind of place Olivia takes her dates to. Not that she dates anymore. In the last couple of years she felt it was all a waste of time. She was tired of getting to know people, she has gotten to the stage where she just wanted to feel at home already. She knows it's stupid to expect someone to know her instinctively, who she is, how she operates, what scares her, what makes her tick. It's stupid but she couldn't make herself go through another evening with someone she wouldn't bother calling again. And deep down she's aware that there's only one person she knows who fits the description. But that's futile. It always was, now more than ever.

And right now she is sitting in a bar with Cassidy, and it feels nice.

"So, heard Stabler left and you don't have a partner." He tries.

She feels like punching him, but decides to let it slide. She doesn't want to wallow in this shit. She hates remembering where it got her. Like outside of his house, staring at his window like some fucking stalker. "You offering?" She brings her eyes back to him.

He leans his left elbow on the bar and his eyes are skimming her. "Nah, I had my turn with SVU."

Olivia nods in reply. She doesn't feel much like talking. Her head is a bit fuzzy.

"You were partners, what, twelve-thirteen years?" He continues.

"Something like that." She shrugs, trying to get him to shut up by not delving into this line of conversation.

"You're screwing him, aren't you?" His words are slurred and she is not sure if he's joking or drunk or both.

"Brian…" she starts with a warning tone, but then decides to dismiss him. "You're drunk."

"So you _are_."

"No, I'm not. Never have, never will." Her gaze pierces him as she emphasizes every word.

She can't take this, not tonight. It's enough that she had to take this shit in all the years she and Elliot were partners, from everyone, including his own son. It's enough that everyone looks at her with pity in the last few months and it's enough that some are losing patience with her and expect her to snap out of it already. What she hates most is those who think that she reacted the way she did because she and Elliot were more than partners. Because it's true, they were more than partners, but they've never slept together. And only she knows how it took every shred of her self will to not go there. Not that she is certain that had she succumbed to it, Elliot would too, but hell, that's another complication she doesn't want to think about right now.

"Why not?" Brian's gaze is a bit fuzzy but he tries to lock it on her face.

"Well, for one, it's none of your business." _Seriously, is this his idea of bringing sex into the conversation?_

"Make it my business." He teases and his hand rests on her knee now. She doesn't remove it but she looks away. "C'mon, Olivia. Are you seeing anyone?"

"No."

"So why aren't you screwing him?"

"He's married and I don't mix business and pleasure. I made an exception for you." She smiles teasingly, picking up her warming beer bottle, deciding she wants to get laid tonight. She needs to. She deserves to. His gaze is still on her and his hand is stroking her knee. "What about you? Heard you got married and then got divorced." She tries to divert the conversation.

"They should research how many cops stay married, ya know?" He mumbles his answer. His palm slides gently up her thigh.

Yeah, she had a sneak peek into the results of that research and the only one that remained married used to be her partner. "Wanna get out of here?" She asks, knowing that he is almost drunk. She could spend a night with him. He is still not quite her type but she was too cocky back then, and she could use a nice man right now.

"What you're sayin', Benson?" His palm now slightly squeezes her thigh.

"Come on." She tilts her head towards the exit and stands up.

He is getting ready to stand up, smiling at her, when her cellphone rings. Of course, how can it not ring? And how can it not be work related?

"Hi," she answers it.

"Liv, another victim. Same MO. You were right, he hit again. Where to pick you up?" Fin's voice is in her ear. In two seconds he knows she's not home and just as soon she forgets she wanted to go home with Brian Cassidy.

"I'll wait outside of 'The Lighthouse'." She looks at Brian, curls her lips in disappointment with a little 'nothing I can do' shrug. He sits back on the bar stool.

She closes the phone. "Sorry, Brian. Got to go."

"Case?"

"Yeah", she nods, her lips a thin line.

"Yeah, well..shame though. See you soon, Benson?" He throws another smirk at her.

"See you around, Cassidy." She offers him a little smile and pats his shoulder fondly. He's a good guy, he doesn't deserve her shit anyway. If she wants to get laid she can do it with someone whose feelings she didn't hurt once. And besides, what is she doing here playing History Channel with him?

She walks outside, not feeling like waiting inside with Brian. Fin will be there very soon anyway. She needs to breathe too, because for a minute there, despite herself, she felt that damn expectation to see Elliot's name on her cellphone screen. That damned disappointment was there too, when it wasn't his name that lit up the screen_. I'm living in the goddamn History Channel._

Olivia takes a deep breath, leaning against the wall outside the bar. People are passing by her in the cool night air which is colored by the lights that seep from the bar and the nearby establishments.

She has realized a long time ago that her longest relationship was platonic and she almost came to terms with that when Elliot left and everything changed. He left her at a point where their partnership and friendship grew stronger and closer with every passing year. They learned that they trusted each other, that they were always there for one another, that there was no need to question it anymore, that even if she tried to hide things from him he wouldn't hesitate to call her on it and still stick with her even if it risked him. She did the same for him. The storms that clouded their relationship at times had mostly subsided and they fell into a comfortable place with each other. In a strange way they were both more involved in each other's lives but then they were also more distinguished from one another. Maybe that's why it was easier for him to break from her. Completely.

She remembers feeling that she should focus on what she could get from life, and that was Elliot as her only real family, as the solid rock that kept her rooted. She wondered in recent years about how long it would last, if he would be offered a promotion at some point, or that he would be sick and tired of putting all the shit in front of his wife and kids. She tried not to think about it. She tried not to think about what she'd do if he ever went away, if she would still have him outside of the job, as a friend. He had all these people around him, would he still need her too?

Well, she knows the answer to that now. So why the fuck can't she let it go?

Because she wasn't aware of how big the void in her was before she met him, but he filled it by just being himself, by being next to her and overpowering everything she knew about need. Now that he's gone she feels like she's trying to find balance in the dark, floorless, wall-less void itself.

The squad car pulls over. Fin leans from the driver's seat to open the door for her. She climbs in. "Hey."

"Sorry about your night out."

"There will be others." She gives him a faint smile.

He looks at her profile as she turns to gaze through the window. He drives away, thinking that it's not a good time to ask her how she's doing, he'd better focus on talking to her about their new victim.

**End notes:** so the Cassidy idea I had 2 yrs ago seemed odd to me even then, I thought ppl would find it weird that I 'resurrect' him. Little did I know...anyway, I don't like where they took it on the show, to me it has a major wtf factor... EO forever, folks!


	3. Chapter 3

She still doesn't know what made her get into the car after Fin dropped her off at her building. It wasn't very late, maybe a bit after eleven. She just dug the keys out of her purse and drove. Maybe she should sell it. That damn car hasn't brought her much luck from the get go anyway. But there she was, parking outside Elliot's house in Queens again. Everything was silent in that suburban street. She knew she wasn't going to knock on his door at almost midnight, but some sort of self destruction she doesn't usually let herself indulge in, made her drive there again and just watch over for a short while without even having a specific thought in her head. She didn't see anything this time around and her tears were kept in check. Actually, realizing how pathetic she was almost made her laugh.

She thinks about it now as she files her long overdue DD5's. The fluorescent light in the small filing room flickers and through the blinds of the window that faces the bullpen she can see the usual commotion of the squadroom.

"Did you try calling him lately?" Fin asked her this morning while they were making another round of coffee in the kitchenette. His focus seemed to be on the sugar he was just adding into his mug, but she knew he was looking at her from the corner of his eyes, checking for her reaction.

"Did you?" She retorted the question bluntly. She knows he worries about her, it's been a few months, hell, she's worried about herself too.

"No. But you should. It'd do you good. Can't keep doing this." Fin looked at her for one brief second and took his mug with him as he walked back to his desk.

They didn't talk about it later, they had so much to do as usual, and he already made his point.

And he was right.

The stack of forms is thin now after she filed most of them. Olivia finishes the last ones and knows. She will not call him. She is not going to meet his voice mail again. She will not leave a message just to be ignored again. She will drive there tonight, but this time, this time she will knock on his door. He will talk to her. Because he owes her that much at least.

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The song on the radio makes her think about life ironies, it is something about '_where can you go to leave yourself behind_' and the singer's voice and the rhythm of it make her mind drift as she drives. Olivia left the precinct resolute because before she walked out Fin approached her. She was collecting her things and when she was taking her jacket off the hanger at the metal lockers behind her desk, he stood right next to her. "Make the call," he said quietly, and she turned her head to look at him. He didn't say another word and she didn't answer, but the look in his eyes and the slight pout of his lips told her that while she's not easy to be around, he's there for her. She needed that little gesture because it made her feel that she is not completely alone and that she is not pathetic.

The thousand scenarios of her first conversation with Elliot that ran through her mind in the weeks since he left were quiet now. And she's glad because she doesn't want to plan, she doesn't want to think of anything beyond 'Hi', beyond 'Hey Kathy, how are you? Is Elliot home?'. She told him everything already in her head so many times but she knows that she can't plan it. She never believed he would cut all communication with her so abruptly, for no reason. So all those words in her head, all the screams in her soul, they are useless, because they were told and whispered and cried out to Elliot, the Elliot she knew. And she's not sure the Elliot she is driving to now is the same one.

It's only after 20:00 but the street is so quiet, almost still. The lights from the two-story houses permeate and mix with the streetlights. Olivia slows down, feeling like an alien in this neighborhood. She pulls over two houses away and across the street from Elliot's house.

She doesn't hear the music that is still quietly playing in the car radio, she doesn't listen to the voice inside of her that tells her that she doesn't belong here and that she should just go home and forget all about it. She remains seated in the car, looking over to the stoop at the Stabler residence, imagining herself walking up those stairs and raising her hand to lightly knock on the door. The light is on so she knows there's someone in there, though she doesn't see his Jeep. A minute more and she realizes that she is slightly heaving and that her heart is beating almost twice its usual pace. Her eyes are locked on that stoop. She pushes back a few strands of hair that fell to her face, and she knows this is truth time. Her fingers close around the key in the ignition, ready to turn it off without removing her eyes from the house seventy feet ahead.

A loud cluck startles her and it takes her a moment to realize that the passenger's side door was opened from the outside. Before her shock registers and turns into panic, a tall form stoops in and sits itself on the seat next to her with a slight thud.

Olivia shuts her eyes.

She'd know that form, that smell, that man, anywhere.

She allows her heaving chest to help subside the loud noise of blood rushing through her entire body. When the noise settles, she can hear his soft breathes, she can smell his skin in the suffocating space of her car.

She opens her eyes but she doesn't dare to look at him yet. From the corner of her eye she can see that he is staring through the windshield and that his right elbow is leaning against the window pane on his side.

They're sitting there in silence for a long moment. It feels like forever. It feels longer than the time that has elapsed since she last saw Elliot.

_Elliot. _

She swallows the mix of saliva and tears that accumulated in the back of her throat. "How did you know?" she manages to say in a cracked voice.

"Not many 'stangs park here for three nights in a row," she hears his familiar and steady voice.

She shuts her eyes again, clenching her jaw. She should have known. He is a detective after all, he's always known where to find her, where she'd be. And that car always was a jinx.

When she opens her eyes, she turns her head to finally look at him.

Everything is so familiar; every detail in the outline of his solid body is engraved in her. His broad shoulders, the firm contour of his neck and jaw, the expanse of his torso, his Marine short hair, his strong profile. Even the grey hoodie he's wearing over a faded black t-shirt and his black sweatpants are imprinted in her.

"I'm sorry. I….you never called me back." Her heart can't sink any lower, can't feel any heavier, and she can hear her own voice, thick with tears and a bit shaky from the effort to hold them back. "I missed you," she finally says and a few tears that can't be held back anymore start rolling down her cheeks. She isn't sobbing, but her hands are limp in her lap and she can't bring them to wipe her face.

Elliot breaks the stare that kept his eyes away from her and turns his head to gaze at her. Olivia notices the muscles in his jaw flex before her eyes fall on his. Even in the pale light that invades the car from the street, she can see the blue tinge. Their eyes are locked together and it slows down her tears.

"I know." He says in a voice that is not as steady, it's half whispered, and his eyelids close briefly in acknowledgement of what she told him. She takes it all in because it feels like the world is slow motioning.

When his eyes fall from hers and he shifts his head to look through the windshield again, she does the same. She imagines what he might think of her now and she wants to tell him that she came here to talk to him, that she didn't mean to sit in the car outside and spy on his house, on his life. She wants to tell him that she hasn't lost her mind yet. But she can't, the words still don't form on her lips. The only word that continues screaming in her head is the question that finally comes out.

"Why?" She nearly whispers it.

'_What about me?' _she half whispered all those years ago, and the pain is as deep as it was then, and her voice is hushed under the sharpness of it as it was then.

He is silent for a while before his voice is softly heard again. "I..don't know." He stumbles on that "I" before he continues and his shoulders slightly rise and fall. He tilts his head in her direction for a few seconds but his eyes are cast down, before he directs them back at the dark street outside.

Olivia gently nods, to herself really. Because she has to remember this, because she needs to allow it in, the realization that this is all that she's going to get from him. Her tears dried and she's gaining her focus back. The car is still on, parked at the sidewalk close to his house and they're sitting there as if everything around them stilled. But it didn't. He has a family in that house, he was probably just getting back home from jogging when he noticed her car. And he has to go back to his life, and that's outside of her car, away from her. She is the one who's dislocated.

He's seen her car there twice, and he still hasn't called her.

Olivia shifts the car into gear. Her sudden movement startles Elliot and his head snaps to look at her. She can't take his proximity anymore, she can't continue inhaling his scent, she can't keep repressing the yearn to reach out her hand and touch him, to make him acknowledge her, talk to her, come back.

"Should probably…" she says, looking back at him, pressing her lips together, without indicating if it's her or him or them that should.

"Yeah," he softly answers, imitating her when his lips become a thin line.

"Bye, El". Her voice is tender, smooth, as his name, his nickname, rolls her tongue.

"Liv, take care." They are still looking at each other and in his eyes and in the way he said her name first, she can see that he means it, that it's not a dismissive 'take care'. It's a request.

She smiles faintly and he opens the door. She watches him as he climbs out of the car.

When Elliot closes the door and turns to cross the street, she drives away. She passes by his house and her eyes are drawn to the rear view mirror. She sees him walking for a second or two before the curve of the street blocks her view.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note**: I listen to U2's song "Bad" whenever I have to write Elliot, especially in this fic. Give it a go in the backgroud as you read this chapter. Since for some reason this site won't allow to paste links here, just type U2 Bad lyrics on you tube. It will pay off, I promise :)

**Chapter 4**:

He's running.

His quickened pulse explains the race of his heart. The cool night air washes away the warm vanilla scent that encircled him in her car. When Elliot reached the front of his house, his stride hastened by itself and he soon realized that he was jogging again. As the fuse of lamp-posts and family-homes lights jitter around him and the sound of his own footsteps echo in the quiet streets, he thinks about distance and pain and need. He thinks about her strength and wonders how big his part is in bringing it down. And about her eyes and the need and plea in their deep brown.

He takes a longer route, longer than the one he's taken earlier tonight, which brought him home in time to see the Mustang he would recognize anywhere parked not far from his house. Again.

He needs to continue running. Despite the nagging pain in his knee. Because of her eyes.

Her eyes, and the way she always looks at him, the way she sees him, all of him, as he is, with just a glance, accepting him, never trying to change who he is. Even now, even when he shut her out, when he sent her away without giving her anything. Because he can't, he can't give her anything. And he's seen it in her eyes, that she could still comprehend it all by just looking at him. Just as all it took him was one glance, one look into her eyes, to realize that she was lost, just as much as he was when she had left him. He's running but the new pain at his side becomes unbearable and he has to stop. Elliot's legs slow down and his halt sends him leaning against a wall. He's panting, stooping with his hands on his knees. He's trying to catch his breath and he knows that she's embedded within him, that she is part of him, that they contain each other. And that's why they can hurt each other so much.

He takes off the grey hoodie, uses it to wipe the sweat off his face and ties it around his waist. He starts running again and he can hear his own breathing reverberate in the street. Elliot gazes from a distance at the approximate spot Olivia's car was parked in, almost expecting to see it there again, but it's gone. The void it left behind compels him to keep on running.

When he passes by his house again he sees that the Jeep is back. Kathy is home, his wife, who left him years ago because he was too distant, while Olivia left him because he was too close. They both came back although nothing changed, he was still too distant and still too close. When Kathy left he could see it coming, but Olivia took him by surprise, almost as if he was expecting her to accept him unconditionally, while he should have known that she could walk away from him despite everything, because of everything. Now that he's left, he knows that she was right to walk away. That he should have done so too, long ago. But he didn't, he couldn't. Even now, that he's tried, she found him, just like he has always found her.

The light in the porch is on and as he finally walks up the few steps to his front door, Elliot knows that he won't get much sleep tonight. Again. Because of her eyes.

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Olivia pushes the blanket away, she can't stand its softness, not now anyway. Her body is too wound up and she knows sleep is a benefit she won't enjoy tonight. She scorns herself and the few stubborn tears that slide down to her temples.

When their eyes locked over the still warm bodies of Jenna and Sister Peg, she knew it was over. Thirteen years with Elliot have taught her enough to know that it was really over. The horror, self blame and defeat in his eyes, which she could plainly discern even from a distance, told her everything Olivia needed to know. But she didn't heed to her own inference. In the midst of the hustle and bustle that ensued, when Elliot stood up and watched Jenna's dead body and she remained crouched next to Sister Peg's, she wanted to believe that she could somehow fix it. She had no idea how, but when he walked up to her and locked his then foggy blue eyes on hers, as he reached out his hands to help her up by holding both her wrists, she thought that he was asking her to.

She wiped her bloody hands on her pants and held his arm just above his elbow with both her hands, and she didn't know who she was trying to stabilize, herself or him. It was good she did though - because when Fin came near them and said something she couldn't hear and only from his hand gesture she understood that he was asking them to move back, away from the bodies - at that moment she was glad that she held Elliot, because she could retreat with him, induce him to slowly walk back towards the crib with her.

"She's dead," Olivia heard him mumble, "they're all dead," he whispered.

Both her hands still held his right arm as they walked towards the crib, and she knows Elliot was in shock, because he didn't try to brush her away, he didn't try to prove her that he was ok and could perfectly well handle himself. That made her stomach drop even further. "Here, let's sit over here," she told him as she walked him towards one of the bunk beds. He sat down and she took a seat next to him, finally releasing his arm and noticing she had left blood traces on his bright colored shirt. After a long moment he turned his head to look at her, his eyes needed hers like she was his lifeline. "It will be ok," she started mumbling, but he interjected.

"Do you think they're gonna let me out of this? She's dead." It wasn't a question, his voice was steady despite the sheer pain in his eyes, it was a reality check. She knew it was.

All Olivia could do was let him hold her gaze, while fighting her tears from being shed. But it wasn't enough, because soon after he stood up and started walking toward the door that lead back to the squadroom. "I have to leave Cragen my shield," his voice rasped. She followed him and this time he led the way, he didn't wait for her and she could already see the resolution in his straight back, his firm neck and shoulders, his stable stride. He walked straight into the Captain's office and placed his badge on the desk.

Cragen was not there, and she just stood at the doorway and watched him do it. When he walked towards her she said "El, please, let's wait for him," but he only slightly shook his head and there was a twitch in his lips as he towered above her and made her clear his way. He stopped right next to her in the narrow doorway and they stood so close that she was almost pressed against him. He watched the bullpen that was now clear of bodies but still humming with officers and uniforms that eyed them.

"I'll talk to you later, Liv," he said in a soft voice, looking into her eyes. She could only nod her head and before she could muster any words, he walked out, straight across the bullpen, passing by the people that looked at him, and out through the double doors next to the empty holding cell.

She didn't follow him, she knew there was no point in doing so at that moment. So she only stepped into Cragen's office, closed the door behind her and sat there waiting for him. In the empty room she finally let herself cry.

She tried calling Elliot later that day but he didn't answer. She tried the next day and the one after, and she thought then that he just needed some time. He had said he would call her and she knew he would. Only he didn't. She knows he talked to their Captain, because he had to, but he didn't contact her nor anyone else.

Olivia stares at the ceiling of her dark bedroom. If Fin asks tomorrow, she'll tell him that she spoke to Elliot and that they're fine now, she'll thank him for the advice and reassure him that now she can pull herself together. In a way, it's not a total lie, because tonight she got the slap in the face she needed after all these months. Cragen telling her that Elliot handed in his papers wasn't enough because in a way she knew he was forced to. She thought that he would still reach out for her although she was running out of excuses for why he hadn't. Well, denial didn't get her anywhere, facing reality will; it has to, like last time. Last time, when helping delivering his baby and saving his wife was the slap in the face she desperately needed in order to get a grip. Had he held her in his arms before that, she'd probably never let him go, but since it happened after, she was able to, with some effort. She can do the same now.

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Her bright hair curtains her face as she sleeps soundly. He doesn't want to wake her, he's been tossing and turning for half an hour, after going to bed a long time after she did. He hears from her changing breathing pattern that his movements disturb her sleep despite the distance between them.

Elliot slowly gets out of bed, he doesn't want Kathy to wake up and question him about another sleepless night. She kept hoping these would be over once he retired and was irritated by his continued sleeplessness.

She shifts in bed and he stops in his tracks to the sound of her voice. "Elliot?"

"Yes, shhh, go back to sleep," he whispers.

Kathy sits up in bed and looks at him in the dull light that comes through the curtains. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I just need some water, go back to sleep." He tries to subdue the irritation in his voice.

She looks at him for another second and then rolls over on her side.

He couldn't tell her that he can't sleep like a baby just because he retired. His body and mind are still ready, ready for a call, ready for a case, ready to be out of the door in three minutes with his gun holstered, ready to have his partner's back. He couldn't tell her because she wouldn't understand. She ceased trying to understand years ago and maybe she focused her hopes on the day he would leave the squad, the force, his partner. Well, there he is, away from it all, but still not here with her.

The refrigerator's light illuminates the kitchen and Elliot grabs a soda water bottle and takes it with him to the front porch. He sits on the white wooden bench they bought years ago and listens to the silence. He promised Kathy he would paint the porch when he had time, but he's never kept this promise, not even now when he has all the time he's ever thought he wanted. Staring across the street, he takes a few swigs from his bottle.

When Olivia looked at him and he could see the hurt and betrayal in her eyes, he tried to form the right words to explain. He didn't know where to start, he didn't know what the point was anyway since he couldn't give her more than a few blank words that wouldn't come close to what he really wanted to tell her.

He wanted to tell her that he misses her too, that he knows what it's like, that he feels that his days and nights are all blended together and that there's not much in him she would recognize. He hardly recognizes himself these days, now that he's useless, that he's lost the battle, that he's killed a girl, that he is no longer needed to save others like Jenna, not even to make up for her death.

_He wanted to tell her that he misses her too. _

For almost a week after the shooting he didn't even tell Kathy about why he was suspended. He thought he needed some time to figure things out before he talked to anyone, but IAB made it clear from the start that he was right to assume that they had his ass this time. They went over every shot he's ever fired, every time he's held his gun or his fist at a suspect, every psych evaluation he's ever failed. Tucker promised him that he would personally open every case he's ever handled. He was done, it was over.

Even if they somehow cleared him, they wouldn't allow him to go back to SVU, and without it there was no point in staying a cop.

IAB were all over her too, Cragen told him that she was called in several times. He knew that Olivia would fight for him and risk herself and he couldn't let them drag her through the mud along with him, he couldn't stand that she'd lose her credibility or her job over him. He told Tucker that they weren't in touch anymore, that there was no point in dragging his partner into this because she didn't have his back on this. He only prayed that Tucker wouldn't use his words as an interrogation tactic on her. He shut down his phone to avoid the temptation to answer Olivia's calls whenever her name illuminated the screen, but her messages kept coming in and he heard them all. He couldn't tell her that he was leaving, she wouldn't let him, not without a fight and he had to stop fighting. He could hardly deal with his own pain and didn't want to be causing hers. He couldn't take it.

He didn't figure that once this was over, he wouldn't be able to talk to her, wouldn't know what to tell her or how. She and the job were all he had at one point, and now he lost his job and he lost her and while he has his family, it's tearing at him worse than it did then. He lost her because he couldn't be with her in the only way he could have her, as his partner. He can't lie again and term her his 'friend' like he did six years ago in confession, unable to admit what she was. He can't lie now and he hoped that maybe this time the distance would help him, or her.

His days started to resemble one another and the memory of her eyes entreating him to stay in that last day, haunted him. He wanted to call her. God, he grabbed his car keys intending to drive to her apartment in Manhattan several times. But it was something he forced himself to put off, because he didn't know what to say to her, and after a while he didn't know if she would want to hear from him again.

"Elliot?"

Kathy's voice precedes her and in a second she steps into the porch through the front door. Eli is in her arms, sleeping on her shoulder. "He called for you, didn't you hear him?" Her voice is hoarse and her slim back is arched under the weight of their four-year-old.

"No. Here, let me." Elliot stands up and reaches to take Eli in his arms. "Here, big boy," he murmurs as the child exchanges his mother's arms for his father's, laying his sleepy head on his father's broad shoulder. "Sorry, Kath, night," his apology for yet again being absent is muffled by his son's soft hair.

"Night," she replies and walks away. He knows she's angry. It's like he's still failing, always failing, as a husband, a father, a cop, a partner, a friend.

He's rocking his son in his arms, making sure that the blanket is well wrapped around the little body, while he allows himself one last moment of cool night air before he pads back into the house. Lying next to his son in his narrow bed helps him unwind a bit. At dawn, before he finally falls asleep, Elliot thinks about the way his heart slammed in his chest when a loud bark made him look through the kitchen window two nights ago and notice the Mustang starting and driving away. The same Mustang that parked there late the next night, when his goddamn sleep pattern sent him gazing through his son's bedroom window. He tries not to think about what she so plainly admitted to him in that car, or about how he stumbled with his words in a pathetic effort to keep her and her brown eyes from piercing him further.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** Thanks to all of you who read and especially to those who took the time to review. Your words matter and are much appreciated!

"I'll go." Amanda jumps up from her seat, her bright ponytail waves around with the motion. She throws a glance at Olivia, who in return looks at Fin. They quietly agree to let Rollins join him in the new case they've just caught.

"Ok," Olivia says matter-of-factly, not looking at the eager blonde detective, "go, I'll wrap up the Foster file, and, Fin, I'll talk to Casey about Karen Briggs, see what we can do."

"Great." Amanda grabs her jacket and starts heading towards the exit. She likes working with Fin, he's not brooding like Olivia and he seems to appreciate her ideas and opinions. She's been here long enough to know that Olivia was really close to her partner who left because of a major screw up and whatnot and she can understand this, really, she can. But it's been months, the woman should get over it already, change is a good thing.

Fin nods at Olivia and follows Amanda, and she's left almost alone in the bullpen. John is on vacation, one of the rare ones he takes, and Nick is in court. The squadroom is rather quiet despite the usual background noise of people talking, phones ringing, fax machines and printers rustling, that mixes with the occasional sounds of cars and sirens from the street.

Olivia stretches her arms over her head, brings her hands together and throws them further back along with her head. She takes a deep breath and enjoys the pull of her muscles. The only thing that disturbs the sudden silent moment is the smell of their lunches that still dominates the large space. She relaxes her body, glad to be so focused today. She hardly had any sleep but a good shower and five cups of coffee can do wonders, especially if one of them is a double espresso.

For the first time in months she actually sat with Fin, Amanda and Nick in the little meeting room to eat lunch together. She enjoyed it, it was better than having a rushed lunch at her desk, leaving half of it uneaten and keeping herself busy to avoid the niceties of sitting down to eat with her colleagues.

"Casey Novak," she hears the ADA answer after two rings.

"Hey Casey, it's Olivia," she identifies.

"Hi. You saved me a phone call."

"Yeah? What about?"

"The Foster case, it's not enough. I can go with what I have for Cheryl Hughes, Dona Brown and Emily Carter, but the rest is…we need more. There's no DNA and without it, it's just not enough."

"For Brenda Foster too? I thought we had a solid case there, I called to talk to you about Karen Briggs, see what we can do to make this one stick." She wants to get the son of a bitch for all five cases. The fact that two of them are one year old means that they need to redo some of the work.

"Sorry, you have to give me more on both. I can't link it otherwise, it's all circumstantial, and as it stands now every public defender can have these dropped."

"Ok." Olivia presses her lips together.

"You handled the Briggs case, right? And Foster was Brooklyn's till we made the connection? Well, I need you to go back and get me something else I can use."

"Ok. Thanks, Casey. We'll keep you updated." Olivia places the receiver back and stretches again.

She rubs her face before getting up and wearing her jacket. She's going to Brooklyn. It will take Fin and Amanda hours before they get back and she doesn't want to wait for him.

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"Rise and shine," her voice is muffled by the pillow that covers his head. He turns around and the pillow is shifted enough to enable the sunlight dazzle his closed eyelids. She opened the azure curtains and the room is way too bright. "Elliot, it's almost 10:00." Kathy sounds impatient and he knows that he needs to get his ass out of bed. He didn't even feel when she woke Eli up to take him to pre-school, leaving his dad to stretch out on the narrow bed.

He's had less than five hours of sleep, but he takes the soft pillow off his face and sits up. "I'm up. Thanks," he says, rubbing his face with both hands. "I'll be down in a minute," he continues, looking over at Kathy who retreated to the door.

"Ok. I need some help with the garage door, it's stuck."

"Again?" he sighs. "Ok, give me a minute."

It's the last two weeks before he starts his first freelance training and advising job in a friend's security company. Retiring from the NYPD the way he did was a long process and he was only officially retired less than two months ago. He used some of that time to think about what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He has always thought that either a bullet or old age would stop him from being a cop. Even when he was in situations that almost ended his career, he held on to this conviction and never really bothered to think about another job. Two of his friends, who left the force long ago, offered him to join them in their security businesses. It was such a cliché, you stop being a cop and you open your own security business or you manage someone else's. He didn't want to do it, he didn't think he could fit in. All he's ever known was the military and the police force and he can't be a businessman now. He refused their offers.

Kathy didn't like it one bit. Especially because when she realized that his days in SVU were over, she tried to convince him to stay with the NYPD and take whatever they might offer him. She didn't care that he would have to be cleared first, that he would have to jump through a lot of hoops to get there, that they would make him crawl and that he might end up in a clerical position. She tried to highlight the positive side of a steady salary, a secured pension, regular hours and less danger. It's like the woman didn't know him at all! He realized that she was just trying to be practical, but goddammit, she wanted him to swallow so much shit, not realizing that it would make him even less bearable than he'd been in his entire SVU career. They argued a lot till he decided not to be a side in any argument and she stopped trying. It turned out that instead of giving their marriage the chance it needed in all the years he wasn't around, they used the time to air out old and new arguments.

After a while it occurred to him that he might be able to do some external training work for the law enforcement entities; they needed trainers, especially people with his experience in combat and in active police work. He used old connections and found that it was feasible, and in a way that helped him soften to the idea of doing the same for private security companies. His first gig is due to start soon but he's not at all excited about this new path. If it makes sense at all, he'd rather be closed up in an interrogation room for hours, trying to crack some lying piece of shit, or chase that said piece of shit in the streets of Manhattan. Just as long as he could do the job he was born to do, with his partner by his side.

His partner. _Ex-partner_.

Yet another reason to stay in bed this morning in an effort to forget how being so close to her again burst the small, turbid bubble he's built around himself.

He drinks his coffee in the garage and places the half filled mug on the coarse wooden shelf. He starts dismantling the door hinges and wonders what she would advise him to do with his life, had he confided in her. Elliot's muscles beneath the blue cotton of his t-shirt are strained under the weight of the door, and a thin layer of sweat forms on his forehead from the effort. No one knows him like she does. When she found out about his mother, she immediately realized what and who his childhood made him into. In a week Olivia grasped him in a way that his life-long wife hasn't although she has known his mother almost as long as she has known him.

He slumps into the sofa in the living room, holding a cold bottle of soda water. The bubbly liquid slides down his throat and he knows that he can't let Olivia go on thinking that he forgot everything they went through, their partnership, friendship. She can't continue believing that he's indifferent, that he doesn't miss her, _need her,_ _want…._.He blocks that last piece out, but realizes that as hard as it will be for him, he needs to let her know the rest. Their connection is inherent, it's stronger than any that he's ever had or known. And by the look in her eyes last night, he could see that it's still there, despite the betrayal and disappointment. Maybe it's not too late, maybe he can still undo some of it.

"Thanks, I saw you fixed it." He hears Kathy behind him and turns to look at her.

"Sure. I hope it works fine now." He gets up and they smile politely at each other as he walks by her to return the bottle to the kitchen right behind her. He can't avoid feeling that they're almost like strangers, polite, careful and distant.

Out of habit and without thinking, he takes off his sweaty shirt with one pull. "I'm gonna take a shower," he informs and when he passes close by her on the way to the stairs he notices that she cringes. He wonders if her involuntary reaction was because she wanted him to touch her or because she hoped he wouldn't. It's been weeks and weeks that he's been taking care of himself, drawing farther away from her.

Elliot examines his reflection in the bathroom mirror and ignores the new lines on his forehead and at the corners of his eyes. His life disintegrates, his job, his marriage, Olivia. He didn't mean for his marriage to fall apart too, and he feels like a bastard for not doing much to save it either. He wanted to use the opportunity to work it out, but he gave up before really trying because maybe there was nothing left to work on. He spent the last few months moving between stupor and pain, and if he has to be honest, the pain was focused on what he left behind in Manhattan while the numbness was mostly directed at what he's come home to. Eli and his older kids are the only break he has in it all.

A few drops of water still slide down his back and chest when he enters the bedroom, a white towel wrapped around his waist.

"I'm gonna pick Eli up, and I think I'll go straight from there to get some things for dinner, Kathleen might drop by again tonight." Kathy changes her shirt and gives her hair a quick brush as she speaks.

"Want me to pick him up?" He could at least try to be helpful.

"No, that's fine, I'll go, I have to talk to his teacher anyway."

Elliot nods and sits on the edge of the bed, waiting for her to exit the room. When she does, he opens the top drawer of his nightstand. There's a book there that he started reading a while ago and got stuck at around page fifty, a ragged looking address notebook, several of Eli's paintings dedicated 'To daddy' with the neat handwriting of his kindergarten teacher, a few papers and forms he needs to tend to and a stack of pictures he didn't frame or placed in an album. Rummaging through the contents, lifting the book and the various papers, he's groping for the round metal plate.

Elliot's fingers close around the cold metal and bear it out into the light. It's placed on his open palm and he looks at the Eagle, Globe and Anchor engraved along with the motto on the round golden emblem. He's had it for years, always stashed somewhere close to him, ever since he was released from the military. It was a gift granted to every soldier released from the Marine Corps. Although it wasn't uniquely bestowed on him, he remembers how excited, proud and tired he was standing straight in line with the others during the ceremony, waiting for his direct commander to reach him. They each received a final solute and a gilded medallion placed in a small black box.

The black box is long gone, his daughters used it for their plastic jewels, but the emblem was religiously kept. These symbols were a part of him and meant so much that during one of his active service vacations he had them tattooed on his right forearm – Eagle, Globe and Anchor. When he showered earlier and reached his hand to his head, it hit him.

_'Semper Fidelis'. _Forever Faithful.

**TBC**


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's note:**I highly recommend playing KD Lang's "Constant Craving" in the background as you read this :) It's a great song and goes so well with this, at least for me. I listened to it as I wrote. Also - Thanks to all those who left reviews, feedback means the world to any writer. Love ya :)

**Chapter 6:**

Without Fin at first and with him later on, she spends three days working on the Foster case in parallel to handling other cases that never cease to come in. Dealing with human malice, affliction and injustice is part of their work, but she never gets used to it, she never will, never could or even should. At least she can be content that with the help of Brooklyn SVU they could get Casey something that might help including the case with the other offences. There's still work to do before they can dedicate more time to the Briggs case.

"Two more days until the final lab reports and I think we can ship this off to Casey," Olivia announces as she closes the beige colored casefile on her desk.

"Great. I say let's make a gameplan for Briggs tomorrow, it's too late tonight." Fin's voice is coming from her left, where he's sitting at his desk with Rollins leaning against it next to him, quietly going over the details of another case.

He hasn't asked her if she's ever made that call, he's never brought it up again and she takes it as a good sign.

"Yeah," Olivia starts clearing her desk, getting ready to leave.

"Do you guys wanna go grab something to eat?" Amanda drawls.

"Mmm…," Olivia thinks out loud, quirking her mouth.

"Ah, c'mon, Olivia, you have to eat, right?" She smiles and then addresses Fin. "What about you?"

Olivia already makes a decision. "Nah, I think I'll pass, too tired," she smiles at Amanda.

"You sure?" Fin asks her, still not responding to Amanda's offer.

"Yeah," she nods with a little smile, "maybe another time."

"So?" Rollins nudges Fin as Olivia puts on her black leather jacket.

"Yeah, I'll go, I can use some food right now. Is Amaro coming back here?"

"I don't know, I'll give him a call." Amanda completes her dinner plans.

"Good night," Olivia greets them, walking to the door.

The third floor lobby of the precinct is empty and she waits for the elevator, recalling the quick drinks she joined with the guys, two nights ago after work. They all went together and she enjoyed herself, even helped Fin and Munch in befriending the newbies. She's glad she did because although they haven't talked much about personal things, the next day Amanda, especially Amanda, didn't seem to rile her as much with her overzeal. She has already learned to like Nick and feels that on the whole they're on a positive trend in learning to work together, but Amanda, she has had a harder time reading her, getting a feel of what she's like beyond a one dimensional facet.

In the buzzing bar, she couldn't help noticing that they were an odd number, there were five of them, which meant that one of them lacked a partner. And while their Captain made sure to mix them together, try out their ability to work with each other and refusing to let two stick together as partners for too long, the absence of one or the excess of one was too tangible as they were seated three facing two in the corner booth. A few drinks later it felt better and she could focus on the people with her rather than on those she was without.

Olivia hails for a cab, not feeling like walking tonight. She's tired and all she wants to do is slouch in front of the TV with her warm comforter. With the exception of the night she went to the bar with her colleagues, the other nights that she has stirred out of her apartment lately weren't a great success. Once she nearly slept with Brian Cassidy and thrice she drove to Queens. No, she'd better stay at home again tonight, flip channels and fall asleep on her couch. Being focused on work for most of the day and on the TV screen for what was left of it, with the occasional visit to the gym, did her good. While work and home and partner intermixed and meant almost the same thing for her for so many years, she now insists on making the distinction and holding herself back from thinking about Elliot Stabler, for most of the time.

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It's been three days. Three days, in which he's been beating around the bush, preparing for his new career, having a family lunch with his kids and wife, servicing his car, applying a layer of paint on the porch, writing a note and ripping it to pieces, getting into the car and turning back home before the Queensborough bridge, postponing what he really wants to do, being a coward.

Elliot turns the TV off and the living room becomes dark except for the glitter coming in through the porch and off the kitchen appliances. He stares ahead for a moment before quietly picking up the two beer bottles off the side table and marching to the kitchen to place them on the counter. Everything is still upstairs and he hesitates at his son's bedroom doorway, looking in, watching the small sleeping form for a while before entering his own bedroom. He climbs into bed and lies on his side, facing the nightstand. He's opened its drawer this week more times than he has in an entire year. The Semper Fi medal is still there, although it's been placed in an envelope now, a regular white one with no address on it. The envelope is not sealed, so a note that will survive the shredding might join it at some point. Some point, when he has the guts to drive all the way.

Kathy mumbles in her sleep and his body stiffens. After a few more minutes, Elliot throws the blanket off and sits up, taking the envelope from the bottom of the drawer. He flips on a small light in the living room and sits there, feeling the small metal object through the paper.

He's made the decision and he needs it to be morning already. He's not going to write any note, he's not good with words and nothing he could think of is sufficient to express any of it. She will understand it anyway, he knows she will. And he hopes that she will also understand that he thinks that she can do this job better than anyone he's ever known, including himself, that she should continue because she doesn't need him, because she can do this for the both of them, and that he's there with her, that in a way he has her back.

Suddenly, in a fit of a moment, Elliot urgently rushes towards the big cupboard near the dining table, where Kathy keeps the fancy silverware and dishes, the one that exhibits family pictures and souvenirs. There are two pictures of him and Olivia there, one with just the two of them and one with their Captain, but that's not what he's after. In the middle drawer he almost immediately finds it. He sits back and in the pale lamp light he's looking at the little object that was made for him as part of a gift for his tenth anniversary as a cop. He laughed when he saw it back then, it was endearing, but he never thought he'd need this miniature. Elliot closes his fist around it before he adds it into the envelope.

The smell of coffee wakes him up. When he opens his eyes, it takes him a second to recognize where he is. His back is rigid from sleeping on the couch and he reaches his hand between the cushions to find the envelope stuffed there. Elliot shoves it into the pocket of his sweats and enters the kitchen to find Kathy there, in her pajamas and robe. "Morning," he slurs.

"Morning. Coffee's ready," Kathy greets him back. "Couldn't sleep again?" She asks while busying herself with the mugs.

"Guess I just fell asleep on the couch," he yawns, "I might drive to the city today, anything you need from there?"

"The city? Um…no." If she's curious, she doesn't let it show.

Forty-five minutes later he's showered, shaved and dressed. He concentrates on the road in front of him, on the reds and greens, on switching lanes, on actually getting on the bridge, Manhattan bound. All his recent visits there bear a bitter taste, all being to the 1PP, mainly Tucker's office and the IAB interrogation rooms. He's never again set a foot in the place that for sixteen years was his home, The One-Six. And now he's back in Manhattan, but this time he's driving to her, she's not going to be there, but he's still driving to her. Cabbies cut in front of him but he's in no hurry.

Elliot pulls over at the first available parking spot he finds and sits in the car for a while, looking over at the building. No lights will blink for him from there today, but that's exactly what he wants to avoid. Knowing the usual work schedule as the back of his hand, he's certain she's not in there, but he falters and he needs a minute to gather his thoughts and make sure that this is the right thing to do. Because in a way, this is giving her something without giving her anything, this is making sure she knows without telling her, this is confessing to her without facing her, this is letting her go without saying goodbye. And this might be bullshitting himself, but that's all he's capable of right now.

He locks the Jeep behind him and jogs across the street.

Learning that the entry code to the building is still the same pleases him in a strange way, maybe because it imparts that some things are still the same, that it hasn't been that long.

He's in. Elliot stops short in front of the lines of mailboxes, the white envelope in his hand, his breathing fitful. There's just one word written on it and he thinks that for him, there's no need to say anything beyond that one word, for him it already says it all.

_Liv._

He planned to leave it at her doorstep, hidden in a way he knows only she could find it, and though she's not home, he can feel her and he thinks about the times he walked upstairs to her. Now that he's here again, he hesitates, not sure if he can make it there.

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_The keys! Goddammit, the keys, where are the keys? _Olivia rushes between the kitchen, the living room and her bedroom. She tries to reconstruct her every movement from last night, while moving things around, throwing cushions, looking under the sofa, behind the chest of drawers at the entrance, on and behind her nightstand, kitchen counter and dinette. For the life of her she doesn't understand why she took out the keys out of the door after locking it last night and worse, she doesn't remember what she did with them. It will probably be harder to find a spare key so she keeps searching, already late for work. Last night she was tired and distracted, no, not distracted, she was very focused when she got home. Focused on emptying her head from everything except for the Foster case and the reruns on TV.

Running out of places to look in, she enters to search the bathroom and as she's about to close its door behind her, her eyes fall on the black dress pants, the ones she wore yesterday and left hanging behind the door when she went in to take a shower. She grabs them and she already knows that the keys will be in the pocket, because she now remembers shoving them there absentmindedly last night.

Olivia grabs her purse and throws one last glance at the disheveled living room, wondering if she should stop for a minute to put things back to place, but she decides against it and in a second she's locking the door behind her. She takes the stairs and rushes into the lobby.

There's mail in her mailbox but she has no time to delay, not this morning. She hurries out and hails for a cab in the busy street.

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"Liv, you coming?" Fin and Nick are wearing their jackets and Fin stops by her desk. Olivia shifts her eyes slowly from the computer to look at him, still holding on to the last sentence of the document she was just finishing going over. Amaro comes to stand next to Fin.

"Go ahead, I'm just about finish this and then I'll go." She asserts, still not quite ready to zoom out of what she's doing.

"Are you sure? Need any help?" Nick tries.

Olivia's smile is warm. "Yeah, I'm sure, thanks." She looks at Fin and continues. "I think I'll stop by Karen Briggs, let her know we're still investigating and have a direction."

"You sure you want to do this tonight?" Fin asks and she knows he'll join her if she just gives the hint.

"Yeah," she nods, "it's a small detour. Go home."

"Ok. Ok, give her the heads up and we'll work the rest in the morning," he hesitantly agrees.

They leave and she sighs. She takes a moment to look around at the empty squadroom. Rollins and Munch are in Rikers on a case, Cragen is probably in a meeting and she's alone. As her eyes skim the bullpen, they fall on the desk across from hers. She gazes at its emptiness for a few seconds and recollects that she has to take out of her car's luggage compartment the box into which she's collected the things that Elliot left behind. When she first decided to drive to Queens, when it was still a reasonable decision, she took it out of the storage room, but she forgot to return it. Olivia jolts her head and returns to her computer.

Half an hour later, she's in Karen Briggs' building, knocking on the door on the fifth floor. When there's no answer she tries again, louder. She presses her ear to the door and is met with silence. After another loud try she can feel that someone is watching her. Olivia turns to the apartment across the hall but before she reaches it, the door opens and a middle-aged man in shorts and a tank top, which do not compliment him, is standing there, holding a burning cigarette.

"She's not there," he says and takes a puff off his cigarette.

"Do you know where she is?" Olivia waves her hand at the smoke he blows towards the corridor.

"No. Who are you?"

She flashes her badge. "NYPD. I need to talk to her."

"Karen left, about two months ago. Nice girl."

"Do you know where she went to? Are you the landlord?"

"No and no." The man draws more smoke and this time tilts his head over his shoulder to blow it out behind him, into his own apartment.

"Do you know if she could have gone to her parents, boyfriend, anyone she might have mentioned? Or maybe you saw someone helping her move?"

"Nope."

"How long have you known Karen?" Olivia asks in a suspecting tone.

"Four years now, like I told you people when you questioned me after she was attacked. "

Olivia eyes him for a minute and decides that all he's guilty of is a nasty attitude. "Ok, if you hear from her, see her or remember anything, please call me on this number." She hands him her card.

"Ok." He raises his eyebrows, looking somewhat reluctant, but he takes the card and closes the door.

_Fuck_. They need to talk to her if they want to nail this case and connect it to the others. Olivia calls Fin on the way home to update him.

"Night, Fin," she signs off while she's closing the lobby door in her own building. She takes the keys out of her purse and swears that tonight they'll stay in the locked door where they belong. Olivia starts for the stairs but in the corner of her eyes she catches a glimpse of her full mailbox. Turning back, she finds the right key and empties the box. Fast food flyers, real estate agencies and the electricity bill. She goes through the mass of destroyed trees in her hands as her feet climb the stairs by themselves. The first thing she notices is the blank whiteness of it. After the colorful flyers it surprises her. She struggles to hold the keys, the papers she's already sorted as junk and the electricity bill, but she manages to draw the envelope out of the stack. When her eyes hit the hand written word her heart jumps to her throat and her breath catches.

_Liv_.

She turns and sits with a thump on the step above her, dropping everything from her hands on it. Everything but the white envelope in which her fingers now perceive something hard and uneven. She stares at it and her mind races. When was he here? When did he leave this? What is it? _Why?_ She squeezes her eyes shut, draws a deep breath and starts to collect her scattered things, shoving it all into her purse, except for the keys and Elliot's envelope.

Olivia locks the door behind her, drops her bag on the floor in front of it and staggers to the couch, sitting down heavily and reaching to switch on the side lamp. She places the envelope on her thighs as she rearranges her hair in the clip to stop the intractable wisps of hair from falling into her eyes. Olivia stares down at her name, the nickname he invented for her years ago, the one he's written down in a blue pen, and instead she sees him so clearly in front of her. His eyes, his blue eyes.

She pushes back the tears because she's been trying so hard these last few days and she was somewhat successful, and she knows that whatever awaits her in that envelope, it's going to throw her spinning all over again. She doesn't even have to open it to know what he wants to tell her, what he probably couldn't tell her in the car. That he hasn't forgotten. Whatever it is they had, he hasn't forgotten, and right now that's all she can ask for. And this, this was his last reach out to her, this is it. That's all she could ever have of Elliot Stabler, and while it should console her, the searing pain this recognition sends through her body makes her eyes overflow.

Olivia's hands are gripping the envelope and she turns it around, there's nothing on the back and by themselves her fingers tear the top. She reaches in and there are two things inside, one rather bulky while the other is a thin metallic plate. The light falls on the first object and it's a casement which she opens. Before she knows it her hand is thrown to cover her mouth as a sob escapes her lips.

_6313. _

She couldn't have known her own badge number better than she's known his. 6313. His badge, a miniature of his badge with the clip and all is resting in her palm. Her fist closes around it and her other hand slides from covering her mouth to rub her eyes and temples and then her hair in a long motion as she lets herself cry.

His real badge probably lies in the filing cabinets of the IAB along with his jacket, but by giving her that miniature he's made sure that it also stays where it belongs, in SVU, with his partner. And she knows it, she's immediately realized what he's asking of her. She would scream if she could, she would scream because she wants him back, because he belongs there with her, because she needs to have his back and she needs him, yes, she needs him to have hers.

Olivia sits there for a long moment as the grief she's pushed back takes over her again. She tries to overcome the clear images of him that flow inside her eyes as she opens her fist and looks at the small copy of Elliot's badge, and she knows that it will go with hers, she will carry it for him. They've carried each other for so long, she has to.

Still holding it in her palm Olivia reaches into the envelope and takes out the round medal. She turns it and once her eyes fully grasp the engraving, she shakes her head and a little twitching smile escapes through the tears and if he were near her she would slap him. She would, because he's giving her pieces of himself, because he makes her hold on to him. Even if it wasn't for his countless stories about his days in the Marines, even if it wasn't for his pride in it - that she shared quietly lest he'd become unbearably full of himself had he known - she had an almost daily reminder of it, whenever he pulled up his sleeves and exposed the tattoo on his forearm, which bear the same symbols that are now gazing back at her. Elliot's Semper Fi.

Olivia rubs her face with her free hand and inhales deeply as she thinks that even if he gave her this emblem himself, she wouldn't dare ask him why and how and who he's faithful to. She wouldn't ask although she needs to know, and she can't read him all the time despite what he thinks, and this is one of these times. She wouldn't ask because maybe she already knows and the wound is not as shallow as she has always pretended it to be.

It's the cold that wakes her up in the middle of the night to find herself lying hunched on the couch still in her clothes. Her palm feels rigid from still clutching Elliot's mementos and Olivia carefully sits up. She snags her holster from the coffee table where she's left it earlier and trudges into her bedroom, leaving it all on her bed. In the bathroom she quickly removes the remnants of makeup and washes her face. She changes into a t-shirt and a pair of grey roll up pajama pants, but before she gets under the covers she grabs a wooden jewelry box from the dresser top. In bed, Olivia mechanically clips Elliot's shield to the holster of her gun, places it on the nightstand and turns to deal with the box. She skims over the contents and retrieves a golden necklace, a bit heavier and longer than the two around her neck. She glances at it and at the emblem that nestles in her palm. Before turning off the light she places both, unattached, on the nightstand next to the holster, desiring only to link herself to the emptiness of sleep.

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Water still drip from her onto the floor and leaves a trail, but she manages to step out of the shower in time to answer the phone.

"Nick, yes, I'll be down in ten, Cap already told me."

She's getting ready to join Amaro, they have to start their day in a brownstone where a teenage girl called the cops after she stabbed her uncle in the crotch and told patrol that he touched her.

After getting dressed, she stops by the nightstand and wears the holster. Olivia doesn't waver while doing it, because although Elliot's gesture sent her spiraling all over again, it feels right, it reminds her that in the midst of it all there's still goodness. When Simon told her that she's so screwed up that she can't believe that there's good in anyone, she knew he was wrong. He was, because she believed in Elliot. Despite the human cruelty she dealt with daily, Elliot was always there to outweigh the evil, with his big heart and care and concern which she could always plainly see even when it hid behind the brooding, the outbursts and the rage.

The necklace convolutes around the Semper Fi medallion and Olivia's hand hovers over it before she retracts and leaves it there. The badge was clear to her, it's what she and Elliot admittedly were - cops, partners, sharing the job, the danger, the losses, the victories. But this, this is a part of Elliot that is not related to the job and she doesn't know what to make of it. She thinks about the symbols that are etched on his body, about the motto, and that having it constantly against her skin might be too much. Slight anger is bubbling inside her again, anger over Elliot's ability to tangle the five fucking grief stages into a messy loop.

For several days it's left in the wooden box. She doesn't have time to think about Elliot's badge semblance clipped to her gun holster but it's enough to know that it's there, that it's right, that it makes her feel a bit safer. One evening, after a long day and a lengthy shower, seated at the edge of her bed in her T and sweats, Olivia tries it on. The necklace is long and the emblem hanging from it hides inside her shirt. The metal is cold at first touch, but it warms up with the heat of her skin. Olivia's fingers graze the engraved Eagle, Globe and Anchor, they stroke the tiny letters of the motto, and she leaves it on. It's been days and weeks and months and she has come to realize that this is Elliot's way to say goodbye and that if she hasn't gained enough balance to leave a part of him close to her, than she damn should. And although she still doesn't know what to make of it, maybe it doesn't matter anymore.

Though she should have known that women always notice a new piece of jewelry. She's only had the necklace on for a day when Rollins noted it.

"New necklace?"

"Mmhmm," Olivia mumbled in affirmative without raising her head from the paper she was holding while standing outside the holding cell.

"Nice. Can I take a look?" Amanda smiled, her hand motioned towards Olivia as if she intended to draw the medallion that was concealed beneath her Burgundy fitted shirt.

"Maybe later," she smiled back, "c'mon, you ready to take a crack at him?" She knew this was the surest way to get Rollins off her back and focused on what she liked best, proving her ability to get them to 'fess up before they lawyer up.

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"I couldn't trace her anywhere, her phone was disconnected, in the DMV her old address is still the latest, her mother swears she hasn't come to see her after she moved out. All she told her was that she was going to get in touch with her once she settles down again." Olivia summarizes.

They're standing in a semi-circle in front of the board, Amanda and Nick are still there although they finished covering the cases they're involved in, when Olivia and Fin bring Cragen up to date with their discoveries and roadblocks in the Briggs case. Rain is beating against the window panes and in the fading daylight it swallows the noises of the world outside.

"No boyfriend, no fiancé, no one knows where she's gone to." Fin adds.

"How come her mother doesn't know?"

"She's in Phoenix, she was here for a month after Karen was raped, but she went back home. They don't have relatives here."

"What about her work?" Don insists.

"She's a graphic designer, she works from home. Her mother says she couldn't concentrate and dropped her customers. We checked, none of them seem to be in touch with her," Olivia answers without taking her eyes off of their missing victim's picture that hangs on the board.

"She has to live off something." Cragen starts to sound impatient.

"She cashed her savings account a week before she moved out," Olivia immediately responds, "she had enough in there to keep her for a while, but I doubt that it will be enough for two months with Manhattan rent costs. My guess is that she left New York."

"Nothing in her file that indicates where she can be?"

"Been over it at least ten times," Fin says.

"So what's your suggestion? We don't have a case without the complaining victim," Cragen asks while looking at the two of them. He doesn't look at Rollins and Amaro and doesn't give them the snarky questions of 'don't you have work to do?' probably thinking that they might learn something from this.

"I don't know, we need to talk to her about her statement, what she remembers, or talk to the next best thing," Fin hesitates.

"What d'you mean?" Cragen sounds hopeful.

"I think we need to talk to Stabler." Fin drops the bomb.

Olivia looks like she's been hit by one, but she doesn't lose her ground. "What the hell for?" She throws a glance at Fin.

"Wasn't it your case too?" Their Captain looks back at her but Fin addresses her before she can answer.

"Liv, you only joined after he took her statement and did most of it, you were busy with the Qadri case," Fin looks at Olivia rather than at Don who asked the question. He needs her to remember, he needs her to understand that he wouldn't suggest it if it wasn't absolutely necessary. Elliot Stabler cut them all out, it's not like he's exactly keen to talk to the man, and it makes him wonder if she's ever made that call. She seemed more like herself lately, different, but herself.

_'Talk to me in ten years when you have no family, no future and a dead career'_, how can she forget Sunny Qadri, Olivia thinks while staring back at Fin. That woman's words kicked her when she was down, but she made it then and she will make it now, though it seems that life keeps sending her reminders.

"Elliot filled me in, I know everything there is to know about this case. Give me a few more days." Her voice comes out too urgent. She can feel everyone's eyes on her, Nick and Amanda are still there and _she_ feels like yelling at them to go do their own goddamn work.

"You said you talked to her yourself only once, the case wasn't even hot when you joined in," Fin's voice is soft but insistent and his eyes are even softer. She knows he's only suggesting because it's the right thing to do, and somewhere deep inside she knows it too. However, she's too slow to respond.

"Fin, call Elliot." The Captain orders and his voice is rough in her ears.

**TBC**


	7. Chapter 7

No one said anything after Cragen gave Fin the order. Olivia stood there expressionless, as Cragen turned back to his office and Amaro and Rollins suddenly remembered that they had a job to do. Fin stayed behind, giving her arm a small squeeze, before returning to his desk.

Olivia excuses herself and retreats to the bathroom. A minute is all she needs to get herself back together again, because it seems that no matter how hard she tries, the thin walls between what she knows is her past and what is now her present keep crumbling down. Olivia washes her face, careful not to smear the makeup. While drying her face and hands, her gaze slides down the mirror to her chest. She lets the paper towel drop into the bin as she extracts the emblem and looks at it, her thumb smoothes its surface.

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He jolts out of his seat when Fin's number flashes on the screen and he panics. Why would Fin call him after all this time? He should have known…if something happened to her he's never going to forgive himself. A hundred scenarios cross his mind in just a split second. He sees her crash on the floor, the blood streaming from between her fingers as she squeezes them to the cut on her throat, he sees the gun held to her head and hears the bullet before she falls down, he sees her eyes. Elliot squeezes his own eyes shut to clear away the black screen that's already forming there and presses the key.

"What happened?" he barks into the speaker.

"Elliot? Man, how are you? I wasn't sure…"

"Fin, what happened?" He demands, his voice thick and hoarse.

"Happened? Nothing happened. Look, I don't want to disturb you, but we have a case that you handled and I have some questions I wanna run by you, it might help us." Fin hesitates for a minute after this. Elliot takes a deep breath and releases it slowly to calm himself down and to repress the sound of his relief from reaching his former colleague. But the panic in his voice was not lost on Fin. He's been around them for too long to not recognize it. "Olivia is fine," he adds gently, realizing that it might have been better if he started the conversation with this statement.

"Yeah, sorry, I thought…what case?" Elliot brings the conversation back to a normal course.

"Karen Briggs. We have someone we like for it, we tied him to four other victims, but we have holes in her case and we can't locate her."

"I remember her. What d'you need?"

"I need to go over it with you, everything you handled. I'm sorry to drop it on you like that, man, but we…can you meet me?"

"Yeah, sure, where?"

"We can come over to you if you prefer."

Elliot holds from asking who's 'we'; if he knows Olivia Benson as well as he thinks he does, she's not going to set a foot again near his house even if it's her case too. "Sure. Tomorrow morning, I'll be home."

"Detective Rollins and I will be there. See you, Elliot." Fin signs off.

_Detective Rollins_. Yes, he does know Olivia as well as he thinks. Karen Briggs was their case, she must still be on it, but she steps down now and he doesn't blame her. It's been two weeks since he's been to her building and he's nowhere close to letting her go as he hoped to be.

Elliot looks around him, running a hand over his head and rubbing his neck. For a moment there he completely forgot himself or where he was. He's standing in the reception area of "AVG Security" and the receptionist curiously inspects him. He jumped off his seat when his eyes met the caller ID on his cellphone and he'd probably been loud answering it. Elliot tugs at his tie and re-arranges it before resuming his seat. He's in a suit again, after months of jeans and sweats, and waits for a meeting with Andrew, former Detective Second Grade Andrew Higgins, to go over the training he'll deliver to his employees.

He's already had two training sessions and it wasn't bad. Next week he's teaching in the Academy and he's actually excited about it. At first he thought they'd turn him down, but his friend there, who knew his father and him for many years, told him that he'd rather have a former cop who knows firsthand what _not_ to do on the job then a squeaky clean one.

Only a few more minutes until the meeting and he's too restless to sit down. Elliot walks over to the window and looks at the street below through the shades, rubbing his forehead. The penetrating fear he's experienced refuses to let go of him. For a minute there he thought that his worst fears were becoming real, that this was the call he's been dreading for months. All this time he's been praying silently that she's safe, wondering who replaced him by her side, if it's Fin whom he trusts to have her back or some new blood, maybe this Detective Rollins. He knows she'd tell him that she doesn't need protection and that he's a cocky sonofabitch for thinking that she can get hurt because he's not there to have her back. But it's been his instinct to protect her from day one, and while she always evaded it, in the last couple of years he felt that she gave in, that she allowed him in. He saw it on her face outside the bathroom where Sonya died, when for the first time she needed him to hold her and he melted away with the knowledge that he should have been there sooner and ignore her eternal 'I'm fine' mantra.

Knowing that she gave in to his need to protect her makes him feel like the biggest bastard alive, because Olivia Benson is the strongest person he knows and she let him in only to have him throw it all away. He was no better than anyone else in her life.

"Mr. Stabler? Andrew is ready to see you." He hears the receptionist behind him.

"Yes, thank you," he mumbles and takes a deep breath before turning from the window and from his own thoughts.

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The car doors slam, and from his seat at the desk in Maureen's old room, which he turned into a little office, he can see the maroon squad car and the two detectives that walk to his doorstep. As he descends the stairs, he hears the knock on the front door. Elliot takes a deep breath and opens it, plastering a smile on his face to hide his nervousness over this encounter with his ex-colleague and the unfamiliar blonde detective who may be Olivia's partner for all he knows.

"Hey, Man, how are you? You look good!" Fin greets him warmly, patting his shoulder with a strong squeeze.

"Good, thanks," Elliot smiles a real warm smile, "come on in. How've you been?"

"Great. It was strange at first, you know," Fin says as he walks in towards the living room. After a short pause he adds "but then we got two new guys. This is Detective Rollins." He introduces Amanda.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Amanda Rollins. Heard so much about you." Rollins smiles, her voice pitches high. She's excited to meet the man that was Olivia's partner for thirteen years and was one of SVU's most prominent members. His handshake is very strong and he smiles at her, though the smile hardly reaches his blue eyes.

"Nice to meet you too. Fin's taking care of you new guys?" Elliot says and motions with his hand for them to sit.

"Actually, Detective Amaro is usually partnered with Detective Benson, but…" Amanda informs as she sits on the armchair across from Fin.

"Yeah, we don't want to steal too much of your time, thanks for meeting with us," Fin cuts in. He's not sure how Stabler feels about this whole thing and he doesn't know if he's over his past sensitivity about Olivia's partners.

"Don't worry, I'm glad to help. Can I get you anything to drink?"

"Nah, we're good," Fin answers for the both of them.

"So, what have you been up to since the retirement?" Fin asks gently.

"I started working as a trainer in several places." Elliot's voice is dismissive as if the detail he relates is insignificant.

"Nice!" Fin exclaims as Elliot finally takes a seat. He looks at him and he feels a bit awkward because he's not sure what to say to someone who practically vanished and seemed to not want anything to do with them till now.

"So…what about the Briggs case?" Elliot cuts to the point.

Fin describes everything they have on the case and Amanda chimes in at some points. As Elliot relates to them everything he remembers about the case, she glances at him and thinks that if she had to pick Olivia's former partner out of a lineup, she'd pick him. Something about the pace of his speech, about the way he moves his body and folds his arms across his chest, about the way he analyzes and talks about the case, something in him is similar or complementary to what she knows of Benson. And she has to admit, he's a very attractive man and she can definitely see women easily falling under his alpha-male spell. With the sunlight that reflects off the ring on his left hand, Amanda can also easily see how that would be a recipe for trouble.

An hour later, after they've went through the various reports they brought with them, they are quite done. Fin and Amanda thank Elliot and he seems more vibrant then he was when they first arrived. When they're standing at the door again, she feels that both men are a bit tense, and all of a sudden she senses that she's in the way.

"I'll wait in the car," she offers.

"Ok, will be right there," Fin takes her on it.

Amanda shakes hands with Elliot who politely dismisses her with 'good luck' and she leaves the two alone.

"How have you really been, El?" Fin asks the moment they're alone.

"I'm…getting along." Elliot's forehead frowns slightly and his eyes are fixed on a spot beyond Fin's shoulder and he can't see that Fin nods his head at this.

"You disappeared." Fin asserts and his words bring to life the third person who's not there with them on the porch.

"Yeah, I know…I…" Elliot breaks his stare and casts his head down. He wants to ask, he does, he wants to be able to ask about her, and how she's doing, who's her partner, if she's ok.

"We missed you, you know, we backed you up on this. She kept it together for a long time." Fin doesn't falter with his words.

"How is she?" Elliot finally manages to say and he brings his eyes to Fin.

"Did you talk to her?" Fin asks and when Elliot doesn't answer, he continues. "You should. She doesn't deserve that, Elliot, I don't know what you think, but I know you should talk to her."

Elliot's face is a mixture of softness and rigidness all at once, but all he does is bite his bottom lip and look away again.

Fin curls his lips. "Talk to her, man," he finally says.

Elliot nods silently and Fin grabs his hand and shakes it. "Thanks for all your help, really appreciate this."

"Sure, no problem, let me know if you need anything else." Elliot replies with a tired smile.

Fin pats his shoulder again and then takes the stoop stairs two at a time. Elliot watches him get into the driver's seat before the car starts and disappears with the curve of the street.

"Nice guy," Amanda tries as soon as Fin drives away.

"Yeah. Listen, don't talk to Benson about this, ok?" Fin replies, almost demands, and his impatient tone is the sign for her to drop the topic.

Elliot remains standing with the front door open, he's staring ahead but his eyes take in nothing of the cloudy street in front of him. He wonders if she talks to Fin, if she got the envelope he left in her mailbox, if it made her hate him more or forgive him some. He wonders when or if this hollow feeling will ever leave him, and he wishes he could talk to her about it, he knows she's the only one who can understand. He thinks about Fin's words and about what he's been trying to tell him.

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She doesn't ask, not when Fin relays the information they received from Elliot and not when she's alone with Amanda in the deserted bullpen. They haven't said anything and she doesn't ask. She just needs to give it a few more days and it will be ok again, it will.

Elliot's memory of the case helped them some; they tracked Karen Briggs up to a friend's beach house in New Jersey, which she left just a few days before, leaving no forwarding address, but it's something. They're closer and Olivia feels some relief because they might bring justice to all five victims. Talking to Calvin at his grandparents cheers her up, she stopped thinking about the 'what if's once she realized they were willing to let them stay in touch.

As usual, the squad is swamped with work and after spending almost an entire day in stakeout and chasing down a suspect with Amaro, Olivia finally enters her apartment building. When she opens her mailbox, she knows it will take some more time before her stomach will stop clenching whenever she does. On her way up she releases her hair from the clip that holds it up and lets it fall on her shoulders. She rubs her scalp and reaches for the keys. She stops in front of the door, and before she sees him she feels him there.

They could always sense each other's presence. Never having to turn back to know that the other is there.

**TBC**


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** Happy Thanksgiving :)

**Chapter 8:**

Her hair. Her hair is different, he hadn't noticed it in the car because it was tied up, but now the auburn waves look so soft on her shoulders and as she slowly turns he sees how it encircles her face and he has to hold himself back so as not to reach out his hand and touch it.

She doesn't say a word, she just stands there and watches him and he knows that he should be doing the talking because he's the one who appeared at her doorstep this time.

"Hi," is all he manages to say.

"Hi," she returns and her eyes are boring a hole in him.

"I'm…I had to see you." It's like his mouth blurts out the words by itself, and he's glad about it because if he had the control, he wouldn't be able to say anything.

Olivia is quiet and only turns back to unlock the door. As she walks into her apartment, she leaves the door open for him and Elliot is relieved, for a moment there he thought that she was going to leave him outside without a word. He walks in after her and watches her drop her things on the table, in the niche near the living room, before she flips the lights on.

She does it all mechanically because she knows that if she stops to think, her knees will turn into butter and the lump in her throat will choke her. When she directs her eyes at him, he's achingly familiar and foreign to her. Standing next to her fridge with his strong built body and his jeans and v-neck black pullover, Olivia feels that his presence fills the entire space of her apartment. He watches her and that makes her swallow hard. He can't keep doing this, he can't keep taking over like that, he can't keep making her need him, not when he's already taught her that she doesn't belong with him in any way now, not when he's already said goodbye, not when she's trying to make it without him.

She speaks while walking over to lean against the breakfast bar, and it's the anger that she needs to hold on to now.

"Must be your lucky day. That's the second time in less than a month." Her voice is not completely steady but it's harsh and she raises her eyebrows in defiance.

He hears the scoff in her words and he knows that she thinks about the times she drove over to him and he just let her hang there and didn't seem to listen to what she had to say. But he _was_ listening and he wants her to know that he lacked the courage to speak and to let her into what was left of his life, and that none of that matters because what he has just told her in the corridor is true, he needed to see her, he had to. She's with him all the time anyway.

"I'm sorry. I…..for everything." He finally configures some words, not enough, but it's something, at least he hopes so.

Olivia only presses her lips together and Elliot searches her face, her eyes, he urges her to say something.

"Ok." She finally says and nods her head, and if he wasn't looking at her he's not sure he would have heard it, but she's not far from him and she can't bullshit him, not him, he can see a tinge of moist glisten in her eyes.

"Liv, I.." he starts softly, but she abruptly shoves herself away from the breakfast bar and walks towards the living room window.

As Olivia stands there, looking outside with her back to him, he glances at her for a moment before he follows her. The kitchen light and the street lamps cast lights and shadows on her curvy figure. As he reaches her, a glitter reflecting off her holster, which she still hasn't removed, catches his eyes.

Before he knows what he's doing, Elliot's arms are thrown forward and land on her hips, his right hand on her holster and he pulls her to turn around.

Olivia could feel him near her and she braced the little poise she gathered while gazing outside, but his sudden touch makes her gasp in surprise and turn.

She turns and almost bumps into his chest. His hands fall from her hips but his eyes are fixed on her right and she immediately realizes what made him grab her. The clip, his badge clipped to her holster. Elliot extends his left hand and touches it as he lifts his head to look at her, his eyes are searching for hers.

She lets him hold her gaze. She can still feel the ghost of his touch on her skin, through her shirt, when his hand drops from the clipped badge. Her eyes break contact and she takes a step back and faces the lights outside again.

"Liv," his voice is so low and so close at her back that it sends shivers down her body.

"I'm tired," she interrupts. She doesn't want him to say anything, she doesn't want to risk falling back against him. Elliot is quiet but she can hear his breaths behind her and it makes her speak again. "I'm tired of doing this alone."

"You're not alone," his voice vibrates behind her.

"You don't know what it's like."

"Yes, I _do_ know. I know, Liv."

She turns around and he doesn't budge, and she needs to get away. "El…I..." she sighs before she can continue. "What do you want?" Goddamn him, he makes her confide in him and surrender to his hold, while she wants to be angry and push him away.

He can smell her hair and suddenly he has no idea what to say, what he wants, what he's expected coming here. All he knows is that this void in him is getting bigger and bigger, and that standing next to her helps some but he needs more and he needs to know if she feels the same. Only he can't ask her that, it doesn't work that way with them.

"I…I wanted to see you and tell you that I'm sorry." These are the wrong words, he knows they are, because they make the truth so small, so trivial.

Olivia shifts sideway and walks past him, she stops to stand in the middle of the living room, facing him. "Wasn't that the point of the mail you left me? It's ok, I understand Elliot, really." She shrugs and he knows that it's not ok and that she doesn't want to understand and he can't seem to be able to explain, not even to himself.

"It's late," she says and her hand motions towards the door.

Elliot's eyes narrow and he bites his bottom lip. He starts for the door and when he passes by her he feels the heat radiating from her. He's almost at the door when he bolts back and closes the distance between them. Her mouth runs dry and she wonders now like she wondered in the locker-room years ago if he's going to grab her and shake her, but he stops in front of her, just like he did then, and his eyes are piercing her as if she's the one who walked away this time and not him.

"You think that this was easy for me?" He growls and when she doesn't answer he continues, his voice raspy and louder. "You think _this _is easy for me?" The muscles under his shirt visibly tense.

He's encroaching on her and she can see the pain through his rage, but she can't back away, she's angry, she is, she has every right to be. _Not easy for him, yeah, right._ Her eyes are fixed on the scar on his chin, and she's holding them there, afraid to draw them up, up to his lips, up to his eyes. Elliot is so close that she can inhale him, so close that she can almost feel the wall of his chest against her. And she's scared shitless because despite of everything she still wants to reach out and touch him, to trail her finger over the pulsating vein in his neck. But she can't, he's not hers, he's never been, he's not even her partner anymore, he's not even her friend.

"No one forced you to walk away the way you did, Elliot. We would have fought for you, but you always had to fight alone." Anger is great, it gives her the courage to look into his eyes.

"I know you would, but there was….no point in fighting." He's not calmer but there's defeat in his voice and Olivia hates that it makes her lose her edge too.

"Well, it doesn't matter anymore, anyway." She disconnects her eyes from his; she needs him to go because the anger keeps fading and he's still watching her, he's still too close.

"It doesn't?" His voice is low again and she could swear that he smirks.

Olivia lifts her eyes almost reluctantly to meet his and there's no smirk, but there's a strange spark in all that blue. Like in slow motion she sees his hand moving to the space between them and Elliot grasps her necklace, the longer one. His fingers slowly graze the skin on her breastbone as he's pulling it and retrieving the emblem that hid at the rim of her shirt till it's held in his right hand.

"You're wearing it," his voice is low and gravelly.

She feels completely exposed and she hates him because she's like an open book now and if he looks hard enough he'll see that he's kept her on the back burner for years, with all his jealous tantrums over any man that dared coming near her, and he had no right. No right, except for the right that she's granted him, and it's herself that she hates right now.

"Is that a problem? You have someone else you wanna give it to?" Olivia doesn't try to hide the contempt in her voice, the small sarcastic smirk and the quirked eyebrow, as she challenges him on the one question she had no courage to ask otherwise.

"I wanted _you_ to have it," Elliot says quietly, still holding the medallion. The anger and slight teasing are gone from his voice, there's only tenderness. The back of his hand is scorched by the softness of her skin and her face is breathtakingly close to his when he bends his head to look at her. His eyes move between hers and he can see the fury shining in them. He wants to extinguish it, but the only way he can think of is pulling her into him and he's pretty sure that with her state of mind it wouldn't be a good idea.

"Thanks and thanks for stopping by," she fakes a smile, refusing to let his answer sink in.

The sarcasm is not lost on him and Elliot releases the emblem and it falls to rest against the fabric of her shirt. Olivia's eyes are drawn to it and she looks at it before she raises them back to Elliot.

He glowers but there's a shade of a smirk on his face, and she recognizes it, he uses it when he's content with himself or when he tries to seem like he is, and she wonders which one it is.

"Good night," he flatly says and withdraws to the front door.

He opens it and lingers a second to look at her before he closes it behind him. Olivia is not sure that he heard her when she whispered 'good night' in response, because she was just planted there between the living room and the kitchen, unable to move yet, she just watched him leave.

Finally moving to the door, she locks it and leans her back against it.

Olivia removes the holster and slides it irately across the breakfast bar and then goes to make herself a cup of tea, slamming the kitchen cabinets' doors and drawers as well as the spoon in her cup.

_That cocky bastard!_ She tries to reconstruct their conversation but she can't, all she can think of at this point is how fucking mad she is. She slams the mug on the counter but her motion is too violent and it slides to the edge and crashes on the floor.

"Fucking Shit!" Olivia curses, looking down at the splattered hot tea and the broken ceramic. Her arms are stretched as she leans against the edge of the counter, her head bowed down, her breathe heavy and her eyes shut tightly.

The anger evaporates and Olivia allows herself the dubious pleasure of reflecting over things that have been guarded in the past few weeks.

Things like how she can't remember when she _started_ falling for him. If it was right there at the beginning, when Elliot's grin and blue eyes made her day, when his over-protectiveness enraged her and made her feel safe at the same time. Or was it later, after she learned to anticipate his actions and words; or was it when she couldn't anticipate, when he surprised her and she felt she was losing her ground despite the fact that they were closer than ever. Or maybe it was when he separated from his wife and she could see his reaction to other women and almost allowed herself to hope. It definitely wasn't after, because when he went back home it took her a while before she could suppress the realization of how deep in shit she was already and how affected she was by it.

Olivia crouches to pick up the broken pieces from the floor and mop it dry. She thinks about Elliot's reaction to his emblem on her necklace and she wonders how much of it he suspects.

_'It's complicated'_ she chose to say all those years ago, because she didn't know how else to put it without revealing too much. What could she say? That she wanted him but knew that he'd be better off with his wife and family, that she loved him but he made her realize that he didn't love her back the same way, and that if something did happen they'd screw it up? That it frightened her to depend on him or anyone else but she found herself needing him more than she could afford? That she didn't want to lose him as her partner only to gain nothing back? 'Complicated' seemed like a reasonable definition, but she wonders if the look in her eyes disclosed the rest.

Olivia throws the fragments into the garbage and thinks about the look in _his_ eyes and about the things he tried to tell her tonight and his voice when he said that he wanted _her_ to have the Semper Fi. She wonders where she should store all this information, maybe along with the look in his eyes in the few times he has held her in the past, because it's useless except for feeding this unhealthy fixation.

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Up to the Queensborough bridge he has to fight the urge to turn the car and drive back, rap on her door and tell her that she has every right to be angry because he did let her down, and that he realizes that she doesn't want to hear him out and doesn't want to acknowledge anything he has to say to her, but that she can't bullshit him. Through the scorn he could see that she was afraid to listen to him, maybe because if she did, she'd forgive him.

Once he crosses the bridge he can stop the fighting and just keep driving like on auto-pilot.

When he approaches the house he mortgaged for her, Elliot thinks that when he saw his badge on Olivia's holster it allowed him to hope that she knows he's with her and that she's not alone, but when he noticed her wearing his emblem, he knew that she can deny all she wants, but she feels the same. Same as before, same as he does.

He enters through the back door and quietly climbs upstairs to find Kathy still awake, putting Eli's toys and laundry away. Eli's bedroom door is closed and Elliot manages to whisper "Hey" before Kathy notices him and puts her forefinger to her mouth, hinting at him to keep quiet. He nods his understanding and enters their bedroom, where she soon follows him. Seated on the edge of the bed, taking his shoes off, he gives her an effortful smile.

"Hey," Kathy answers his greeting, while placing clothes in the dresser. "Where've you been?"

"The city," he replies, still attending to his shoes.

"This late?"

"Why, did you need anything?" He raises his head to look at her and when she stops arranging the laundry and turns to face him, he realizes that this came out wrong.

"Why d'you always assume that I _need_ something?" She leans against the dresser and her voice rises a bit.

"I didn't mean…" He starts and stands up, looking at her apologetically.

"You never mean, Elliot, you never mean." Kathy interrupts but her voice is not harsh anymore, it's tired.

"Kathy," he tries to say but it comes out as a sigh. They don't even have the energy to fight each other anymore.

His wife approaches and stops in front of him, her eyes are wide and blue and beautiful, and the look in them sends a pang to his stomach. He reaches his hand and strokes her upper arm. Kathy looks intently at his face before she breaks away towards the bedroom door.

"Did you see Olivia?" She asks, watching him from the doorway.

"Yes." He admits.

"I thought you two weren't on speaking terms." It almost sounds like an accusation.

"We are," he replies, and his voice suggests that it's an everyday, common knowledge fact, although she has seen him once pressing the 'quiet' mode button on his phone while Olivia's name kept flashing on the screen.

Kathy bites her bottom lip before she speaks again. "How is she?"

"Fine, she's fine." Elliot mutters and he really wants this conversation to be over.

"Good," Kathy says, nodding her head almost distractedly, pressing her lips together before she turns and walks away. She stopped buying into that 'fine' long ago. She doesn't know about Olivia, but she knows her husband well enough to see that he's not fine. And it's not only his sleeplessness and the lack of excitement over the opportunities his retirement has brought on, it's also the feeling that he's nowhere. Not with her, not with work, nowhere. It's like he left but he's still here, and she doesn't know how to bring him back, because he's been long gone. And now Olivia is back.

He's taking his clothes off in the bathroom and he thinks about Olivia's eyes and about Kathy's. Elliot walks into the hot spray and thinks that he might have given Kathy everything he owns, but big parts of him are not his to give and it's like he's wading through life, trying to be faithful to everyone and ends up being faithful to no one, least of all to himself.

**TBC**


	9. Chapter 9

The emblem itches against her skin but she doesn't take it off. She looks at Fin and wonders what he'd told Elliot that made him show up at her doorstep a few days after they'd met.

They're in the sedan, staking out a suspect, and she blows hot air on her cold hands, watching Fin through the corner of her eyes.

"Want me to turn the heat on some more?" He asks and she can see that he hopes she refuses, because he's hot and has already taken his jacket off.

"No, that's fine. Let's hope he shows up soon." Olivia answers and rubs her palms against the fabric of her pants to warm them up.

"We'll get coffee on the way back," Fin promises, ensuring her that she'll have something to warm her hands against.

She smiles at this and Fin turns to look at her. "Everything's ok?" he asks.

"Yeah. Why?"

He shrugs and raises an eyebrow. "Nothing, just…you know…you never asked about how it went with Elliot the other day."

"Should I?" she asks. It's been two days since Elliot waited for her outside her apartment and she doesn't want to think about it, let alone talk about it.

"Did he call you?" Fin retorts the question back to her.

"No," she lies, though it's not exactly a lie, Elliot didn't _call_ her.

"Liv, you know we still don't have Karen Briggs. We might need to talk to him again."

"I think this is our guy," Olivia says as she notices their suspect approaching. Fin turns to look and when they affirm that it's their man, she's glad to end this conversation.

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"So Casey just decided to go without it?" Nick asks when they're riding to the ADA's office to discuss two cases, one which he and Fin handle and the other is Karen Briggs.

"She doesn't want to stall the trial anymore, she has four sure wins and she'll try to make Briggs stick too, given that the MO is the same," Olivia explains.

"But without a victim?" Amaro questions.

"We gave it more time, but we can't find her, not in the tri-state area," Fin answers.

They'd had a few more days of searches before Casey notified them that she'd go with what she had, and now they're parking outside her office building to discuss just that.

The three of them are walking towards Casey's office and Olivia is quiet, while Fin and Nick discuss the details of their case. "You guys go ahead, I'll be right with you," she says when they pass by the restrooms. They shortly nod their heads without stopping their progress and she enters the ladies room.

When Olivia approaches Casey's office, she can hear them talking and laughing and she wonders what the hell they have to laugh about. She pushes the door open, still wondering if it's just her who lost the ability to enjoy some collegial jesting, when her eyes fall on the occupants of the office.

"Olivia, hey," Casey welcomes her with a smile from her seat behind the desk, "look who's here".

Fin and Nick both turn to look at her from their seats facing Casey, and she notices Fin's face and she knows that he would have told her, had he known anything about it. She can see that he's not comfortable, for her sake.

"Hi," she says to no one specific and she hopes that the word did come out of her mouth, though she's not sure. Her eyes are done roaming and they are now locked with those of Elliot.

His eyes are warm and a soft smile lights up his face. She hasn't seen him smiling like this in a long time. Fin and Nick turn back to Casey, but Elliot's body is still pivoted towards her and when she lets go of the door and walks over to the vacant seat next to Nick, at the farthest side of the room from him, she can feel his eyes following her.

"Ok, so now that everyone's here, I wanted to see how we can get Max Brodly for all five victims although we're missing one, but I think I can at least try to make it stick if I bring all the evidence and witnesses we have and pull the MO card." Casey starts and Olivia loses her right about there.

She watches her, full of energy and focus, and right now she detests Casey. _Fuck you_, she thinks, for being so comfortable with Elliot in the same room, for going over their heads, for not telling them that she's going to use his testimony on this case and for surprising her like that. Her jaw clenches and her palms sweat and Olivia is thankful for Nick's presence next to her, almost as if his lack of history with all of them helps clear the murky atmosphere in the room.

"What do you think, Fin? Olivia?" Casey asks and Olivia lets Fin answer because she has no idea what the question was.

Casey knows. This is probably why she went straight to their Captain and didn't notify Fin and her about this. Of course Casey knows, she practically called Olivia on it twice already. Olivia remembers the question hovering on The ADA's lips a few years back when she told her that she had to fight for Elliot because he was her partner, and just recently she as good as told her that she was off because of Elliot's absence.

Elliot, whose voice she hears now, is answering one of Casey's questions although she has no idea what he says. All she hears is the raspy vibration of it, his 'I'm on a case' tone that she thought she'd never hear again. Olivia closes her eyes for a short moment, and while he's not really back, for a minute there she lets herself feel as if he is.

"Ok, so final meeting next week, people. Thank you." Casey's determined voice and her hand's flat tap on the desk wake Olivia from her musings. "Fin, Nick, let's go over your case," she motions for the two detectives to stay. "Elliot, it's been a pleasure."Casey smiles as she reaches over her desk to shake Elliot's hand.

"Likewise." He smiles and is getting ready to leave. Fin stands up and they exchange handshakes and back pats, while Amaro politely shakes Elliot's hand with slight nods of the head.

In the parting commotion, Olivia makes it to the door, she's the closest one to it and she needs to get out of there. She catches Amaro's look of concern and manages to whisper to him "I'll see you guys later", and she's out.

The bathroom is just down the corridor and she takes a deep breath as the door closes behind her, and her hands grip the white porcelain sink. Olivia heaves for a few seconds, before she raises her eyes to the mirror to gaze at her flushed face. She brings her cold fingers to her cheeks to cool herself down some when the door is flung open.

She turns to gaze at Elliot as he walks in and lets the door close behind him, his eyes intent on her face.

"You realize this is the ladies room?" Her voice comes out steadier than she's expected.

"Yeah," he dismisses it, "listen, I realize this caught you by surprise, I was surprised too, but Casey called me saying she needed me to testify."

"So now you're handing out your number to the entire NYPD _and_ the DA's Office?" Olivia asks sneeringly, her lips curled up in a teasing smirk.

"Cap has my number, he gave it to her." Elliot brings his hands to his hips and the rigidness of his face and the tone of his voice infer that he's holding back from the collision path she tries to pull him into.

"Can she even use your testimony on this? Will it hold up in court?" she's asking and maybe if she listened in the meeting she'd know, but she doesn't care, she just wants to use this against him.

"I retired, Liv, I wasn't fired." He rebukes. A short moment later, when she doesn't answer, he continues. "D'you have any idea how much I missed all this?" His hand motions towards the door, in the direction of the offices outside, where they just discussed a case.

Elliot's eyes are moving between hers, trying to gauge her reaction, her understanding. Olivia looks at him, at the cobalt pools of his eyes, and she thinks that she could drown in them.

She says nothing and can only feel her chest heaving and she hopes it's not noticeable to him too.

Elliot moves his right hand from his hip to rub his head and neck as if he ponders what to do. He looks away from her before his hands drop to the sides of his body. "Bye, Olivia," he mutters and in a second the door closes behind him.

She leans back against the sink, her hands clutch the cold porcelain again as she stares at the closed door. Elliot was wearing a suit and he was so like himself that for a moment there she was surprised when he said that he missed all this because for a millisecond it felt as if he's never left.

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Casey didn't hear back from her about this. After cooling down in the bathroom she decided not to give her more reasons to question her judgment or her reaction to Elliot. Plus she could count on Fin to give the ADA a piece of his mind about leaving them in the dark like that. Olivia didn't say a word about this to Fin or Nick either and their ride back was used to discuss other matters concerning their caseload.

But when Nick and she finished a short update with their Captain about one of the cases and Amaro left to make a phone call, Olivia couldn't help addressing Cragen about this. They were standing alone near her desk and she rolled a pen between her fingers, thinking how to bring this up.

"Why didn't you tell us that Casey's using Elliot for Briggs?"

"She said she only wanted to check the option." Don's eyes penetrate her as he continues. "Olivia, I want this case over and done with as much as you do, and I'll do everything I can to get that psycho for Briggs too."

"And you think I won't?" She knows her demeanor in the past months didn't go unnoticed by him but she'd never jeopardize a case, and he made himself pretty clear about the duration of his patience when he asked her to pack up Elliot's desk. This reminds her that she needs to bring the box back from the trunk of her car.

"You would, but I don't think you're being objective on this one." Cragen's round face is dead serious.

"Why, because of Elliot? Give me some credit." A nervous smile cracks on her face.

"This case is not over till the final sentencing, you'll have plenty of time to prove me wrong."

"Ok, ok." Olivia says and her first 'ok' is confident at her ability to prove her objectivity, but the second one comes out dejected and it's good that the Captain has already nodded his head at her and went back to his office, because she has just realized that it's going to be a long journey.

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A suit and a tie for the meeting in Casey's office were ok, but for the meeting tomorrow he'll wear a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and it's not because he suddenly needs to plan his wardrobe, but going to the One-Six in a suit might be too normal, when nothing is normal about him being there. Him in a dress-shirt and a tie in that precinct is a matter of the past, and while he sometimes wore other things when he worked there, it was rare, it was when he was undercover, when he slept there and ran out of clothes, when he was puked on or when he tried something else when both Kathy and Olivia were gone.

Olivia. Olivia who has given him a clear message to stay away from her.

Elliot takes a swig off his beer and sets the bottle down cautiously on the last unpainted part of the porch. He's been promising Kathy for weeks that he'll apply the second layer of paint and since today he has no training to deliver, no training to plan, he thought it'd be a good way to kill time. It takes him longer than he's planned though, there are so many cracks and holes in the chafed, old wood that he's spent the entire morning trying to fix them till he grew tired of it and decided to just paint over it in an effort to conceal the damage.

In another lifetime he might have offered Kathy to sell this old rundown house and buy something smaller, maybe even in the city, because he feels like he's done with the suburbs. He feels more alive there and he sometimes feels like an alien here, in the place he spent most of his life. His older kids are hardly ever here anyway and Eli is young enough to get used to anyplace. But in the state of things right now, he has no business moving houses or having conversations with Kathy that are bound to run into brick walls.

He examines the last brushstroke, picks up his beer and walks into the house to shower and crash in front of the TV with a warm delivered pizza, since Kathy is visiting her sister for a few days with Eli.

**Author's Note**: If you've made it this far, I can only thank you by hinting that next chapter starts the 'Mature Adult' rating chapters ;D


	10. Chapter 10

_There are too many people in here_, she thinks as she's sitting at her desk, trying to overcome the accumulated paper work. There aren't more people in the bustling bullpen than usual but with her back to the entrance and with the goddamn twitch in her stomach, she feels like there's just too much noise and movement around her and she wants to scream at everyone to just shut the fuck up so she can concentrate.

Her hands rub her temples and forehead and Olivia realizes that she's also nervous because she _shouldn't be_ nervous at something as a pre-trial discussion that she's done a million times with Elliot before. But as much as she would have given a kidney to have him back with them till a few weeks ago, it seems that 'be careful with what you wish for' is an idiom based on true stories. Their recent encounters, the last one being him barging into the bathroom in the DA's offices almost a week ago, proved her that things can't go back to being normal again and that outside the job she can't even be his friend; and maybe he's known it all along and that's why he severed her.

"Hey, Liv." A voice comes from behind her and she turns to smile at Fin and Amanda who return from interviewing witnesses.

"Hey, had any luck?" she asks them.

"Rough start but we have something to go with," Amanda updates and Olivia blankly smiles at her.

"Where's Cap?" Fin shrugs his jacket off.

"In his office." Olivia motions with her head.

"Casey there?" Fin looks over at Cragen's closed door.

"No, she's not here yet," she answers and his questions are making her even more nervous.

"Elliot?" he asks and she almost wants to roll her eyes because of the grimace Fin's face turned into without him even noticing it.

"Not here yet," she replies and gets back to her efforts to concentrate in her documents and computer screen.

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The sergeant at the front desk doesn't look familiar as he walks past him, and he's glad. One less person to recognize him and either nod at him or stop him in his tracks, squeeze his shoulder and say something like 'hey, Stabler, how have you been?' or some other stupid thing that annoys him on the one hand and makes him thankful for being remembered on the other. His jaw muscles are strained from the fake smiles and from clenching and gritting his teeth the entire morning.

When Elliot walks out of the third floor elevator his confident stride doesn't reveal the mess of emotions that rumble inside him. He looks around and it feels like coming home after a long absence to find that you're a stranger in your own home. Things and faces have changed but most of it is the same and it pulls a nerve string inside him so hard that he almost wants to turn and walk away. On the wide and short corridor that leads to the Special Victims Unit, images are blazing in front of him, of himself walking there with victims, lawyers, suspects, with his friends and Captain and his partner, and he thinks about how feeling that he belonged there used to be so obvious.

When he reaches the double doors that lead into the bullpen he takes a deep breath and delays for just a moment to look at his former home, the place that he last saw months ago. He looks at the floor at his feet, where Jenna's body once laid, and his chest contracts.

"Elliot." Fin's voice startles him as the detective stands up from his seat and walks over to him.

"Hey," he replies and advances a few steps into the squadroom, as if he's checking that the ground is solid beneath his feet.

Fin pats his shoulder and stands there with him for a few seconds.

"Must be strange being here again after all this time," Fin says quietly and looks around the room too, joining him in taking it all in for the first time after so long.

"It is," he admits and it comes out as a sigh.

He notices first the things that stayed the same, like the kitchenette at the far end, the coffee corner, the metal lockers, Fin and Munch's desks, Cragen's door across from where he stands, and the double desks that belonged to him and Olivia. It all takes a few seconds and his eyes delay on her messy side and on the emptiness of his. He half expected to see her brown hair smooth on her back as she sits at her desk, but she's not there. He notices all the new things, the empty space where the holding cell used to be, the old fashioned charting board that replaced the large media board and the new detectives' desks.

"Want something to drink?" Fin offers as they walk further inside.

"No thanks. Everyone's here?" Elliot asks, anxious to start this already, to focus on the material and take his mind off of all this, though seeing Olivia again is not going to be easy either.

"Casey's on her way, Liv's in with Cragen. C'mon, let's get in there." Fin's tone is still quiet and soft as he motions with his head towards the office door.

"Let's go." Elliot's jaw clenches for the millionth time that day as Fin pushes Cragen's door open.

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Cragen stands up and she notices the urgency in the movement and recognizes his excitement. It consoles her in a strange way, to know that her Captain is also excited to see Elliot again. Olivia remains leaned against a low wooden cabinet that stretches over one wall in Don's office. There was always one of them sitting on or leaning against that cabinet, she remembers, as Elliot follows Fin into the room and shakes hands with Cragen.

"Liv," Fin greets her and Elliot turns his head to look at her.

He gives her a slight nod of his head and looks back at the Captain. She hates the way her heart rate has doubled itself at the sight of him.

"Good to see you, Elliot." Cragen says as they're waiting for Casey to arrive.

"Good to see you too, Cap." Olivia smiles inside at the way he still refers to Cragen as his Commanding Officer.

"Thanks for helping us on this, I realize this is not conventional, but we'd better give it a shot than not."

"Sure, I…I hope I can help." Elliot shrugs and she remembers his pleading voice, '_D'you have any idea how much I missed all this?',_ and her jaw clenches at the memory of her silence.

"Heard from Smith you're doing quite well there now." Cragen smiles at Elliot, and Olivia's heart misses a beat because she realizes that she's never bothered to ask him what he does for work now.

"Yeah, it's ok," Elliot answers with a slight smile.

Her eyes are skimming his smiling profile, his neck, they slide down to his shoulders and to his arms that are resting on the chair's armrests and down to his right ankle that's crossed on his left knee, and despite the situation she feels the flutter in her lower stomach.

"Sorry I'm late," Casey's voice says before they see her. "Hi, everyone." She smiles when entering the room.

"You're not late, and, before you grab a chair, I thought it'd be better if we do this at the board, I want to see the dots connecting." Cragen says as he stands up.

They all walk out to the bullpen and the semi-circle they create in front of the board, right next to the joint desks that she now occupies alone, makes Olivia miss another beat.

From her spot at the end of their line she glances at his wide stance, his hands that move from his sides to join behind his back in a Marine posture, his neck that is strained as he looks at the board, his untouchable face, and although she's seen Elliot standing there like that so many times before, her breath becomes shallow.

Arrows are added to the board, linking the various crime scene photos and the hand written points as Casey describes her detailed strategy and Fin and Olivia indicate the relevant evidence. Elliot writes points and helps making more connections as they summarize the way the Briggs case will be introduced in court.

Olivia watches Elliot in action and she recognizes the activity thrill, the sharp analysis, the determination and concern to get justice done, and only she can see that it's all tainted by a thin layer of remoteness and despondency. She also notices that he hasn't acknowledged her since the slight nod of his head when he entered Cragen's office or the random look in her direction when she speaks, and while it doesn't surprise her, it still makes her wince.

"Ok, great. We're not giving up on finding Karen, but…good luck, folks," Cragen summarizes their briefing and the semicircle disperses.

'Thanks' and 'bye' and 'talk to you later' follow Olivia as she walks over to her seat with what she hopes resembles a smile cladding her face.

"Elliot, listen, thank you. I hope it means you're ready to stay in touch. You've been missed." She overhears Cragen.

"Sure, thanks. It's been…interesting." Elliot's voice is quiet and Olivia imagines the look on his face.

"Before you go, I saw the box with the things Olivia packed from your desk in the filing storage room. Why don't you grab it from there while you're here?" It's Don's voice and she feels Elliot's eyes on her.

She doesn't hear Elliot's response, but furtively peeping through the curtain of her hair as she pretends to be deeply immersed in one of the documents on her desk, she sees him walking towards the side exit of the bullpen, which leads to the back, where the filing storage room is located. Olivia pushes the hair from her face and looks around, finally able to breathe. She knows she shouldn't do it but she can't let him go like that, without saying one word to him. She fights the urge to follow him.

And she loses.

The back part of the third floor is quiet and deserted and Olivia's heart races in her ribcage as she reaches the door. _'Let him go. You can start by packing up his desk, we can't keep it as a shrine,' _Cragen's voice echoes in her head.

_Let him go. _

It's a small room, packed with metal cabinets all around its walls, crates and boxes are stacked on the floor and a small oblong table is squeezed in the middle. Elliot is standing behind that table and looking into the contents of the box placed on it, which she finally remembered to bring back from her car. He raises his eyes when the door opens and she knows that it's his own face and his son's that gaze back at him in the picture he still holds.

They're both still quiet when she closes the door behind her and takes a few steps into the room. Her hands nervously arrange the rim of her shirt till she forces them to be still and rest on her hips.

"You really missed all this, didn't you?" She asks with a soft lopsided smile and rests her shoulder against a metal cabinet in front of the table.

"Yeah." Elliot's eyes close for a second and an almost imperceptible smile curl his lips up just a bit. He places the picture back in the box and fumbles with its contents.

She watches the roll of his shoulders under the blue-grey cotton of his t-shirt, the fabric stretches and flexes on the bulk of his biceps, and maybe because it's not an everyday sight anymore, she has to swallow, hard. Then as if by invitation he rolls back his sleeves and exposes his forearms. The tattoo.

He digs a pen out of the box and puts it on the table as if this is what he was looking for and she knows he's only buying time. He brings his eyes back to her.

"What do you do for work?" Olivia asks hesitantly and the question sounds strange in her ears.

"I deliver training sessions. The Academy, Quantico, private companies." He answers but he seems compelled to and the wave of his hand is almost impatient.

She presses her lips together in a smile of appreciation, nodding her head, before she teasingly asks "They let you teach?" and her eyes are warm on him.

"Apparently." A small, tired smirk flashes and disappears on his lips. He stops looking at her and starts closing the box and she feels that she loses him completely.

"I'm sorry I didn't ask about that before." Her voice is sincere. "Good luck," she adds, trying to do away some of the sting of their previous meetings.

She looks at his hands that are holding the cardboard wings of the box aimlessly, and she notices that his knuckles are almost white.

"Why are you here, Olivia?" Elliot's sudden motion as he moves from behind the table and his rough tone startle her.

"What're you doing following me here?" He glowers at her and she inches back to the cabinet, her widened eyes are almost leveled with his darkened irises as she stares at him incredulous.

"I…" she starts and she hates that she can't seem to finish a goddamn sentence when he's this close.

"I thought you don't give a fuck." His voice is grating and his head tilts so he can gaze into her eyes. "I try to talk and you shut me up, or you shut me out completely."

"Ishut _you_ out?" her voice is raised, steady. She can't believe this prick, this too-close-for-her-own-good prick.

And this acts like a reality check on him, because the grating is immediately replaced with a low, soft tone, and it's even worse. "It wasn't meant to be like that, I'm sorry," he huffs in her face and she can smell the wetness of his breath, and despite herself this makes her eyes drop to his lips.

She doesn't know what wasn't meant to be like what and she can't ask because she can't even think of anything right now, her breath is shallow and when her chest swells it almost touches his.

"Yeah, I missed all this," Elliot says in this low, gravelly voice and everything slow-motions for her, his hands that are raised to lean flat palmed against the cabinet on both sides of her head, his eyes that skim her face and linger on her lips. "I missed _you_," he breathes. "I missed you," he repeats and she has a second to realize that Elliot's mouth whispers this against her mouth, before she feels his lips fully closing on hers.

Her head tilts up, pressed against the metal and her mouth instinctively opens to him.

She doesn't know who closed the final centimeter between them, but she knows that one of her hands is holding his neck tightly, her fingers scraping the cropped hair at the back of his head and her other is groping the side of Elliot's face, her fingers splayed on his cheek, behind his ear and on his jaw. She feels his jaw muscles work as his open mouth is melded with hers, his tongue penetrating and searching the inside of her mouth and meets hers as she's tasting the wetness of his mouth.

The movement of his jaw as he devours her, the sound of his breathing and Elliot's taste and scent and touch, make her insides feel like they're made of cotton wool. Her head is buzzing and she's dizzy, unaware of anything outside their bodies, outside this.

Elliot's hands cup her face and slide to her neck and throat, his fingers graze the skin of her clavicle and she moans into his mouth as they slide down the sides of her body, over the sides of her breasts and on to her waist and hips.

Olivia feels the low groan vibrates in Elliot's throat as her hand smoothes over it on its way to his shoulder and chest and she revels at the roughness of the rock solid pectorals through his shirt, his heat radiating into her palm.

She arches her back and her breasts crush against his chest, her pelvis meets his and Elliot pushes a leg between hers and she can feel every crevice of him. Their kiss is urgent and deep, and her entire body is a live wire centered at the wetness that's pushed against him.

Elliot's hands dig into the flesh of her hips and waist through the fabric of her shirt and he slides them to her stomach and up towards her breasts. Olivia tugs at his shirt, her hands roam around his torso to his back as she's trying to make contact with his skin. Elliot trails his mouth over her jawline and down to her neck, as his palm slides up to cup her breast. Her mouth is free and she can finally breathe.

She finally opens her eyes.

She finally recognizes where she is and what she's doing.

She finally realizes that she's panting and that Elliot is showering her throat and collarbone with open mouthed kisses and that she's grinding against him while his hard-on is pressed against her hip.

_Elliot's. Hard-on._

Olivia freezes for a second and then her hands are on his chest and she's shoving him. Elliot's mouth detaches from the nook under her ear with a wet noise, and he's panting too.

His eyes are glazed and unfocused as he looks at her and she knows they mirror hers.

"Liv," he whispers and sends his hand to her cheek. She shifts her head and he lets his hand fall to his side.

She pushes her shoulder against him and he steps back, making enough room for her to walk past him and out of the door.

In the bathroom, she washes her face without looking at her reflection. Her mind is still humming and she knows there will be aftermath, she just hopes that it's not going to be now.

A toilet is flushed and one of the stalls' doors open. "Hey there," Casey says tentatively as she turns on a faucet.

Olivia gives her a small, fake smile through the mirror.

"What's with you? I hope you're not mad at me."

"For what?" Her voice comes out hoarse as if she hasn't used it in a long time. But she has. To moan. Into Elliot's mouth. She feels a flush of heat and color rising to her cheeks again.

"For, you know…I didn't mean to go over your heads with this, Liv, I happened to talk to Cragen when the idea came up and I …"

"I'm not mad. Listen, I have to go." Olivia interjects and grabs a paper towel on her way out.

"Bye," she hears Casey as the door closes behind her.

_**TBC**_


	11. Chapter 11

**"Like coming home when you don't know where you've been, like black coffee, like nicotine, I need your love. When the night has no end and the day yet to begin, as the room spins around, I need your love" - U2, Hawkmoon**

All these months of silence and now he calls her? Olivia switches the phone to silent mode for the fourth time that day and takes a sip off the glass she's been cradling for at least twenty minutes. The red wine is nicer now that it's warmer, but instead of increasing the buzz in her head, it actually does the opposite and lets fragments of thoughts peep through it, and there's no way to escape this.

It's Elliot for God's sake, _Elliot_. Her partner-for-over-twelve-years Elliot, her friend-and-family-and-off-limits Elliot, the I-left-you-with-the-job Elliot, the father-of-five-kids Elliot, Kathy-Stabler's-husband Elliot. What has she done? What was she thinking? All these years of burying her feelings as deep as she could and treating him as all these things and now he's also…the-man-she-shamelessly-touched-all-over-and-craved-more Elliot.

Olivia buries her face in her palms and rubs it till her chin is supported by her hands that lean on the breakfast bar. Now _this,_ in the precinct of all places. And he's married! Married, for fuck's sake, no, not for fuck's sake, for God's sake. What does it make her into if she enjoyed it and wanted him so much that nothing of the self preservation remained and she was completely engulfed in it, and what does it make her into if the first thought to cross her mind when he looked at her after she shoved him was not that it was wrong, but that Elliot's eyes were hazy with desire.

_Elliot's eyes. Hazy. With arousal. For her._

Olivia gulps the remaining wine in her glass and grabs the gym duffel from the bedroom. She needs to be somewhere, doing something, just not this, just not thinking about this, about undoing what's done, about exposed nerves and betrayal and wrecking and how now it's all out there, everything she's ever tried to suppress and ignore and wall off. And she doesn't even want to start thinking about Elliot and what he's going through right now or about what the hell all this means.

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"Olivia?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you with me?"

"Yeah."

"Casey left a message, we're not due in court yet."

"Ok, great."

"Are you ok?" Fin asks when her irrelevant response proves that she's not quite with him.

"Yeah, I just…Nick's already waiting and I need to finish this, we're going to do some interviews in Washington High, see if that teacher harassed only his colleagues or if he's been touchy-feely with any of the students too."

"Ok."

She places the form back in the file and grabs her jacket, leaving Fin behind and heading out, glad to be in the field today. She actually slept at night after exercising herself to near death in the gym, in an effort to kill any memory of how Elliot tasted or smelled or felt. She came back home dead tired, but her memory was still intact.

Before entering the sedan, she rubs her fingers across her forehead and takes a deep breath, in the nine-hundredth attempt to clear the heavy weight off her chest.

Seven hours, half a dozen interviews and one suspect apprehension later, Olivia finally slumps into her couch. The takeaway boxes are stacked neatly in the plastic bag that waits on the kitchen counter, but she isn't hungry yet.

There is one missed call displaying on her cellphone, a call she chose to miss two hours ago because nothing has changed since Elliot's four other rings from yesterday. She still doesn't know what to think or feel or say to him and she doesn't want to hear his apologies or regrets or whatever it is he'd think fit for this occasion.

Out of necessity to eat rather than real hunger, Olivia unties the plastic bag and pours what's left of the red wine into a glass. She takes a sip and looks for the chopsticks inside the bag when the knock on the door stops her. She figured he'd try that if she didn't answer his calls, only she hoped he'd think better of it, as there's not much they can say to each other now. She deliberates if she should answer it or be extra quiet till he goes away.

"What?" She greets him, holding the door.

"Don't do this." Elliot shakes his head once and his fists clench at his sides as he's digging his nails into his palms.

"Do what, Elliot?" She looks at him, standing in the corridor in his black leather jacket and jeans and those blue eyes that pierce her.

"Don't treat me like this is all one big mistake." He steps forward and she shifts to let him in. Elliot stops at the entrance to her living room and she closes the door.

"But it is and you know it."

"I know that it's wrong." She notices the twitch in his jaw; he doesn't take his eyes off her.

"Then why are you here?" she asks and she's afraid of his answer, because whichever it is, it can't be good for her.

"Because it feels right. Don't tell me that this doesn't feel right."

Elliot advances a few steps and he's right in front of her and she can smell the cold leather mixing with his cologne.

"I'm telling you to go home, Elliot." She feels that her breath becomes shallow.

"I tried. Turned the car around." Their eyes are still locked together.

"So?" She looks at him doubtful.

"I'm still here." Elliot's voice drops an octave and the saliva clicks in her throat. She shakes her head but Elliot takes a step closer and places his hand on her arm.

"Liv, I'm here." His voice is even lower and he pulls her into him, both his hands on her biceps.

She lets herself be drawn, because while she doesn't know what to think or feel or say, she knows she wants to, she wants to feel him, to inhale him, to be held by him. She needs to, and while she's resisted it for so long Olivia lets her cheek rest on Elliot's shoulder, under the shelter of his chin and inhale his skin over the edge of his shirt as his arms close around her body, pressing her to him. She feels his breath in her hair, the heat of his body is seeping into her and her hands snake around his torso and meet behind his back, under his jacket, one of them fisting his shirt.

This feels so fucking good and she thinks that maybe, maybe this could be enough, when her heart jumps to her throat as Elliot's hand slides up her back, caressing her nape till his open palm nestles the back of her head and his fingers thread in her hair.

It sends shivers down her spine and when Elliot kisses the crown of her head, the blood in her veins becomes a tad warmer. She shifts just a bit, but Elliot tilts his head back and gently pulls her from under his chin. Olivia looks up and their eyes meet. He places a soft kiss on her forehead and on the bridge of her nose, and then lets his eyes skim her face. She can feel his breathing pattern changes and she knows that this is the time to push him away, when he lowers his head and captures her upper lip with his lips. Her eyes close and she gives in to the sensation as Elliot draws in her lip and with his tongue opens her mouth to him.

His tongue penetrates deeper into her mouth and his hand fists her hair, holding her head in place as their tongues meet again and again and roam each other's mouth. They kissed the day before but his taste is still new to her and she's overwhelmed by it and by the way his mouth feels against hers after all these years. It's Elliot and she remembers somewhere in the back of her mind that it's wrong and that she told him to go home and that he should, but right now she can't let go of him.

Everything around them is a blur and all she hears is their breaths, and all she feels is Elliot and his mouth and his left hand that moves up to caress her cheek and then agonizingly slowly slides down the column of her neck to her chest, and before he even reaches her breasts, her nipples harden in anticipation. Elliot cups her full, round breast, kneading it through her shirt, drawing his thumb over her nipple, inducing a deep groan in her throat.

"God, Liv," he growls against her mouth and it can't be God that he's thinking of because if it were, he wouldn't be so hard against her. Her hands on his lower back pull him closer to her and she can feel him, all of him through his jeans. Instinctively she bucks against him and they both release muffled groans; it takes over her, she wants him like this, she wants him more than this, she wants him inside her, she _needs_ him inside her, and to feel Elliot's need for her and the way his body responds to her is intoxicating.

Elliot is nipping at her lips and traces his mouth along her jaw till his hot breath is in her ear and it sends pulses down her belly, straight to her core. He shrugs off his jacket, as he walks them a few steps slowly till her back touches the breakfast bar and she arches it. Elliot is licking his way down to the base of her throat, one of his hands supports her back while the other rubs her breasts. They're both panting and Olivia's hands shoot up to his neck and she presses his head against her as he's kissing the dent in her throat and slides down to the soft surface above her breasts. She parts her legs enough to allow his body to find its place against hers and her hand manages to slide under the layers of his cotton pullover and t-shirt. Touching his bare skin makes her gasp and Elliot brings his mouth back to hers before he slides it again to her ear.

"Not here," he breathes, "not here." Her knees become weak at this just as his hands slide down to her ass and he hoists her up and she wraps her legs around his hips. She kisses his mouth and neck as he walks them into her bedroom, stepping out of his shoes on the way.

He bends and gently places her across the bed. He remains half standing, his knee at her side, and through the haze she watches as Elliot takes his shirt off with one swift pull. At the sight of his bare chest, she rises up and touches him, running her hands over the muscular planes of his stomach, chest and shoulders, bringing her mouth to taste it. She thought she knew what that would feel like, she brushed against his bare chest once, but it was nothing like this, nothing. Elliot bends further and meets her half way, hovering over her before he pushes her back and lies on top of her, his hips spreading her legs so that his body fits hers completely and his mouth is back on hers. Elliot's body weight pressing into her makes Olivia moan, she wasn't prepared to how it'd feel against her body.

His name escapes her lips, into his mouth and it draws a groan from him. Elliot pushes his hands under her shirt, hauls the fabric up above her breasts but he doesn't stop to take it off as he feverishly caresses and kisses her exposed skin, rubs her breasts over the black silk of her bra and cravingly sucking on her hard nipples through it. Olivia removes her hands from his neck and frees herself from the shirt completely. Elliot watches as she pulls it over her head and his glance captures the necklaces that slid to the side of her neck. He picks up the medallion he gave her, holds it between his fingers and looks into her eyes for a moment before he veers his head down to kiss her mouth and naked shoulders, and slide the bra straps off them.

She writhes under him to unhook the thing and throw it to the floor, and the feeling of his hard chest against her naked breasts makes her even fuzzier. "Elllliot," she moans as his hands and mouth find their way to her breasts, and he rubs one while his mouth sucks in the other, his tongue licking her nipple, and goddamn him, he knows a thing or two about a thing or two.

Elliot's erection is pressed hard against her lower belly and Olivia's hands push between them, to the front of his jeans. She manages to unzip it and starts fumbling with his belt, her hands rub against his hardness. "Olivia, mmm" he growls, his mouth on her neck and she doesn't know if he added a curse word or called God again, but it doesn't matter because Elliot is kissing his way back down to her breasts and stomach and with one hand he unbuttons and unzips her pants, granting himself access to the soft skin at the edge of her panties.

He pulls himself up, enough to yank her pants off, tossing them to the floor; he then unbuckles his belt and she grips his shoulders as he storms back down to lie on top of her. He melds his mouth with hers, his tongue sliding into her mouth as his fingers slide into her panties. She gasps as his fingers familiarize themselves with her wet folds and his body above her tenses as she bucks into his palm. She needs him, she needs him inside of her. _Now._

Impatiently Olivia pushes his jeans off of him, along with his boxers, and with his help it all falls to the floor in a heap along with the socks he kicks off. She runs her hands over Elliot's massive body, allowing herself to taste and kiss him as he peels her panties off.

Her hand snakes between them and grasps him, freely stroking the hard length that taunted her through his jeans. Elliot groans her name in her ear and takes hold of her wrists, intertwines his fingers with hers and pins them at the sides of her head. He stills for a moment above her, supporting his weight on his forearms, and they look at each other before he leans in to kiss her again. Olivia feels him at her entrance before Elliot pushes into her.

She exhales against his mouth and they let the sensation linger before he starts moving slowly inside her, letting her adjust to him. She releases one of her hands from within his and brings it to his neck, dragging her nails through the closely cut hair at his nape. Elliot kisses her ear and neck and slides his free hand over her body, down to the soft skin of her inner thigh. He massages it up and down and he looks into her face as he hitches her thigh higher up on his hip, gaining access to sink deeper into her.

Everything about him is intense. His anger, his devotion, his protection, his violence. His love is too. And this feels so familiar to her, and then again so strange. Elliot's thrusts into her are hard and deep and prolonged and he's not gentle, and this is what she needs. The fluttering of her inner muscles grows stronger and his breath becomes heavier and perspiration breaks on his neck and back. He pushes harder into her and shifts his body so that his lower ab rubs against her with each thrust and Olivia moans at the sensation.

She starts feeling her release approaching, she tightens around him, producing groans from him and their intertwined fingers clutch together. Elliot's mouth crashes on hers in a forceful kiss and when he breaks it to breathe he looks into her eyes and more than anything, seeing his face as pleasure washes over it, makes her muscles clench around him and she moans his name and other unintelligible syllables as the ripples of climax consume her and she shatters around him, dragging him up there right along with her.

"Liv….God, Olivia" Elliot growls before his mouth comes crashing down on hers again, and she has her senses enough to marvel at the knowledge that it's _Elliot_ that comes inside her, that it's Elliot that empties himself inside of her.

She caresses his neck and kisses his ear, as he's still inside her, heaving, his face buried between her shoulder and neck and their bodies are slightly slick with sweat.

With his arm wrapped around her, Elliot turns over to lie on his back, taking her with him, her head rests on his shoulder, her leg splayed over his and her left hand rests on his chest. Olivia's eyes close and she lets herself relax as she listens to the quickened beat of his heart.

Elliot's fingers brush up and down her arm and she strokes his chest. This is so soothing, so natural, but if she opens her eyes or if the motion of his hand on her arm stops, she's afraid she's going to wake to the full weight of guilt and regret and desire. But for now they lie there quietly.

After a while, Elliot's voice is soft when it vibrates in her ear and beneath her cheek that's pressed to him. "I know what you want to say, so don't say it."

"I wasn't going to say anything." Olivia's voice comes out strained.

"Ok." He sounds relieved.

"What did you think I was going to say?" She opens her eyes to the dim light that comes in from the kitchen and through the curtains.

"Things that I don't wanna hear right now." His hand continues the featherlike strokes on her arm.

"Like what?"

"Like 'go home'." Elliot's hand stills.

"You should." Her voice is hoarse but stable.

"Do you want me to?" Elliot asks and she doesn't answer. He tilts his head in an attempt to look at her. "Liv?"

"No." The truth comes out quietly.

"Really?" Elliot shifts his head again and she feels his eyes on her as her head is still on his shoulder.

He feels the slight shrug and nod of her affirmation and his arms tighten around her and squeeze her further into him.

A few beats pass before Elliot's voice rasps again. "I can stay."

She digests this before she lifts herself up to lean on her folded arm, her palm supports her head as she's gazing at him for the first time since he's been inside her. "How come?" she asks and her other palm is flat on his chest and she feels the steady rhythm of his heart.

"They're in New Jersey," he says with his eyes on hers. "Visiting," he adds before she manages to ask and she notices that he doesn't say who 'they' are, but he doesn't have to.

Olivia nods once and bites her upper lip as her eyes break from his and look away.

"I want to stay." Elliot cups her cheek, thumbing her cheekbone, tipping her gaze back to him. Their eyes are locked together when he slides his other hand to the back of her head and pulls her down to his lips.

It surprises her that she can't bring herself to really hate herself or him, at least not right now, though she has a feeling this would come too, along with regret. She's been the Patron Saint of the Stabler marriage for so long, denying her own feelings, and she's not exactly sure what's his excuse or what has changed now, but as for her - maybe it's because she doesn't have him next to her all the time like she used to, and being torn for so long of what feels like her other half, has broken something inside her.

Their kiss becomes more eager and they grip each other until Elliot turns them around and he's on top of her again, his hard-on lingers at her entrance. Olivia cups his face in a deep kiss as he drives himself into her again and they're frenetically holding on to each other, till Elliot slows them down with rhythmic thrusts. Olivia opens her eyes to find him watching her and she gazes back into his eyes that glitter in the darkened room. He shifts and turns them to lie on their sides, face to face, their arms around each other.

Elliot kisses her, short, tasting, biting, teasing kisses and he caresses her face and hair. As he traces his left palm over the hourglass of her waist to hold her thigh above his hip so he can penetrate her deeper, the dim light reflects off the gold band on his finger. Olivia shuts her eyes tightly to block the sight away, because although she realizes that she's sleeping with a married Elliot, the physical reminder of it sends her heart to her stomach.

"Liv. Baby, open your eyes," Elliot's low, breathy growl urges her and she complies, and from the soft, glazed look in his blues she knows that he's completely unaware of what made her close her eyes and that he just needs her to be with him.

The cold Chow Mein somehow tastes better with Elliot on the other side of the breakfast bar, forking the crispy chicken, in his boxers and t-shirt, while she's in a t and lounge pants. She remembered the food waiting in her kitchen when she heard Elliot's stomach grunt with hunger.

Climbing out of bed with him, when they're both naked, was awkward and she was glad for the clothes stuffed under her pillow; it allowed her to quickly dress, still under the comforter which he had pulled around them earlier. His boxers lay on the floor at his side of the bed, and he could dress while she was busy doing the same. It's not his side of the bed, she remembers correcting herself, it's the side of the bed he was at, and that's a big difference.

He catches her staring at him eating, rubs his chin and smiles at her nervously. "What?"

"Nothing." She can't help smiling back. "I'm…I don't know what to think," she adds, her smile gone.

"Then don't." Elliot's tone is soft and he holds her gaze.

"How long will you last not thinking about this, Elliot?" She cocks an eyebrow.

"I don't know," he admits quietly and the look in his eyes is clear and she sees the swirl of emotions reflecting in them. She sees herself reflecting in there.

"So that's it? We just don't think about it?" she asks and lowers her eyes to her food.

"I'm not saying that it's…I've never done this before," he starts and falters and she looks up and finds guilt and pain and rue flicker in his eyes.

"I know," she quickly says and her voice is hoarse and she doesn't add that she's never done this before either. She's never slept with a married man before, she's never slept with her partner, ex-partner, whatever. She's never slept with Elliot before, and if he's going to regret and retreat, he'd better do it right now, when she still thinks she can take it.

"It's not how I'd choose it to happen, but I can't pretend that I didn't want it to." Elliot looks directly at her and she wonders what the hell they're doing and when this is going to explode, and if he can see the relief in her eyes.

Olivia rubs her face and takes a deep breath, exhaling it into her palms.

"C'mere," Elliot gruffs and leaves his fork and food and circles the bar and takes her in his arms as she spins in her seat to face him. She lets him hold her and she holds him back, because he's still all the things he used to be for her but he's so much more and she's taking it while she still can.

Back in her bed, Elliot's strong, solid body spooning hers is comforting. His arms around her create a haven, his breath behind her ear is soothing and the monotone stroke of his thumb on the back of her hand lulls Olivia into sleep.

**TBC**


	12. Chapter 12

Thanks for your reviews! Your words mean a lot to me!

Happy New Year :)

**Chapter 12**:

When she has to get something from the filing storage room the next day, she asks Rollins to do it. Going in there in the middle of a work day might throw her off, as if her mind isn't busy enough going back to the occurrences of the last forty-eight hours.

She can still smell him on her despite the shower, she can still feel him on her and in her. She woke up to the sensation of his heavy, muscular arm on her waist and a slight soreness between her legs and she took a shower while Elliot was still sleeping in her bed. When she emerged from the bathroom he was already up and dressed. There was no awkwardness when he approached her and palmed her cheek, smiled and whispered 'good morning' before he kissed her lips, like she had thought there would be. His morning breath was familiar from years of witnessing him wake up in the crib, and when he entered the bathroom she called after him to use whichever toothbrush he could find there.

They didn't have time for coffee and she waited for him by the front door, unlocking it as soon as he came out of the bathroom. Elliot grabbed her wrist and stopped her, cupping her face and kissing her, before he finally let her open the door. Outside her building they had only said a quick 'bye' before she started walking to work and he crossed the street to his Jeep.

Her day is crazy as always and she's in the middle of interrogating a suspect with Nick when her cellphone vibrates and it's Elliot's name on her screen. She returns it to her pocket and calls him back two hours later, when she's alone in the sedan, waiting for Nick to buy another round of coffees.

"Liv," Elliot answers after two rings.

"Hey. I have only a minute; my partner is coming back soon."

"God, that sounds strange," he snickers.

"I know." A small, breathy chuckle invades her words. "You're not working today?"

"I am, preparing stuff for tomorrow, but I'm working from home." He can hear her breathing at the mention of his home, on the other end of the line.

"Liv, you working tonight?"

"Not supposed to," she sighs.

"Can I see you?" Elliot lets the words spill out before he has time to regret this.

"Yeah," Olivia's reply comes after a short pause.

"Ok. Is your partner back?" He tries to joke at this again.

"He's about to. Bye, El." She takes a deep breath as she hears him respond before closing the phone.

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He brings Italian takeout with him and they eat in her living room, leaning on the armrests at each end of her small couch, facing each other. He asks her about her partner and about work and she tells him. She tells him about the newbies and about rotating partners and she even tells him that it's been hard for her at first, that it still is sometimes.

"I know how it is." Elliot looks intently at her over his plate. "Any of them you prefer working with? What about Fin?"

Olivia puckers her lips. "Fin's great. They're all ok, I guess. It looks promising. I don't know." She smiles at her own indecision.

"You'll get it right, Liv, just give it time." Elliot smiles at her and there's warmth in his eyes and she feels it washing all over her.

She places her half empty plate on the coffee table and takes a swig of her beer before she leans closer to him and reaches her hand to touch the stubble on his jaw. They haven't kissed when he arrived, not quite knowing yet how to conduct themselves around each other, and now she wants to feel his lips against hers.

With one hand Elliot leaves his plate on the side table behind him, and then with both his hands on her waist, he pulls her to him. She shifts her body and straddles him, cupping his face and running her palms over his stubble. They glance at each other, still taking it all in, before she brings her mouth down on his. The initial gentle touch is replaced with a possessive, hard kiss, their tongues battling, penetrating, her hands frantically run all over his neck, shoulders, chest and the taut muscles of his abdomen, his fingers dig into her hips, pressing her down on his hard erection. They moan into the kiss and help each other out of their shirts. Sliding his hands all over her, Elliot pushes her to lie on her back and before long their clothes are discarded and he's pummeling into her, her hands clutch the straining muscles of his biceps.

It's primal and possessive and as she cries out his name when she comes, the feeling that this is how it has always been with them dawns on her.

Elliot doesn't ask to stay, he just does, and later in her bed she straddles him again and they make a slower, gentler love, their hands caressing, stroking, intertwining, their eyes locked together, till the convulsion of climax takes hold of them and their eyes drift shut.

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There are moments at work when she thinks that maybe this is not really happening, or that maybe he just needs to hold on to something of his past and it's her that he's holding on to, but then he's at her doorstep and she lets him in and she lets him undress her and she knows that it's real and that it's much more than their past.

A few days pass in a hazy train of desire, guilt and suspense. He doesn't tell her and she doesn't ask when his wife is coming back home but she guesses, because on Friday Elliot doesn't spend the night. He breaks their kiss when she loosens his necktie, and he looks into her eyes. "I can't stay tonight," he says and her heart constricts and her stomach clenches although she knew that this was bound to happen sometime, that soon reality would disperse the comfortable haze she's allowed herself to sink into.

The grimace on his face and the twitch in his jaw betray his feelings and she forgives him on the spot, though she isn't sure exactly what she needs to forgive him for.

Later on, he sits up in bed, his back to her and he picks his clothes from the floor. He turns to her and reaches his hand, running his fingers through her hair that's spread on the pillow and then smoothes them over her face, before he stands up and starts dressing. She watches him and for the first time since this has started she has tears in her eyes and she hopes that he can't see them.

When he's fully dressed, Elliot sits on the edge of the bed, his body turned towards her and he strokes her face with the back of his hand and bends to kiss her. Olivia kisses him back and manages to keep her tears in check.

"Liv, we'll talk tomorrow," he promises and kisses her and caresses her face once more before he walks to the bedroom door. He stops there, looking at her, and she whispers back 'bye'. She hears the front door closing behind him and the lock turning from the outside and she remembers that he still has her keys. He's had them for years. Only then she lets the tears slip to her temples.

The next day she catches a case and doesn't come home at all. He calls her in the morning and for the first time their conversation is strained but he tells her that he needs to see her and asks if he can drop by her apartment later on, and she hates that he calls it 'to drop by' because she knows it means that he'll only stay for a quick fuck and then leave, because it's Saturday night and this is why she's never got involved with a married man before, but this is Elliot so she says 'ok'. In the early afternoon she's needed with Amaro on a case that she knows will take the entire night. She calls Elliot to say that she's probably not going to get home at all and he says 'Liv, be careful' and she strains her ears to listen to any background noises that might tell her where he is, and that makes her hate herself.

On Sunday, before noon, when she's getting ready to go to the gym, there's a knock on the door and it's him. She lets him in and before they even say 'Hi' they throw themselves at each other and stumble to her bedroom.

Only later, when she's cradled in his arms, she gently asks how come he could make it and he says 'Zoo' and her stomach flips and she regrets ever asking. She abruptly gets up off bed and wraps a sheet around her because she's still not used to walking around naked near him. He calls her name and when she doesn't answer he follows her to the bathroom.

She washes her face and he stands behind her, stroking her back, between her shoulder blades.

"Liv, baby, I'm sorry. I didn't mean…" Elliot says and he looks at her through the mirror but her eyes are buried in her wet hands and her hair falls on her face.

"I know," she rasps and he makes her turn around and pulls her into his arms. They sway in a close hug for long minutes, until she kisses his neck and he responds and the sheet drops to the floor and they make love against the bathroom countertop.

And it's not all bad, she thinks, because later that day, they go out to have lunch together near her apartment and they talk about his work and about a book she read and her dream vacation and her meeting with Calvin and they even talk about how his older kids are doing in college. And while they know they have to be careful on the topic of his family, she's never thought she could have this with Elliot, that they could laugh and talk and mention the NYPD only three times in two hours.

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In the middle of the next week Elliot's due for his first training sessions in Quantico and they can't meet. He calls her every evening 'to check if her revolving door partners have her back' as he calls it. When he's back he can't see her because it's the weekend and he hasn't been home for four days. He doesn't tell her this when they talk during the weekend, but she knows.

On Monday he's due back in Quantico and Olivia nearly falls off her feet when she opens the door late at night to find that he drove all the way to spend a few hours with her. He pulls the same stunt the next day and she asks him not to repeat it again, because he's missing so much sleep that she's afraid he'll have a car accident or tell the Feds that the NYPD rules or do some other stupid shit that will cost him his work or worse.

It is that first night when they're cuddled in her bed and he refuses to sleep although he's tired after driving for hours and still having hours of driving back ahead of him. Her head rests on his chest and her left palm and his right are held together, their fingers brushing, grazing, intertwining.

"El," Olivia's voice comes out in the darkened bedroom.

"Mmmm?" Elliot sounds drowsy.

"Why now?" Her voice is soft.

"Does it matter?" She feels his voice vibrates in his chest after a short pause.

"Yes. No…yes." She sighs, thinking that it might have been easier if they'd went down this road five or six years ago when he was almost divorced, but then again they were complicated back then too.

"I didn't plan this, Liv. It's not something that…It's not something that I do." Her heart skips a beat because the guilt is evident in his voice.

"I know," she half whispers.

"That's not what I'm saying, Olivia."

"Then what are you saying?" She started it because she has to know, but this conversation makes her nervous, it airs things they don't talk about.

"That maybe what happened with us before this doesn't matter." Their fingers intertwine and his thumb is stroking the soft skin of her palm.

"Maybe not, but what changed?" Maybe he's right and maybe what happened with them until now doesn't matter, but he's not saying what she's thinking, that while they didn't plan this, everything else does matter because they're not alone in this.

"I…I left and….things changed and….when you came over to my house, when I saw you there, when I left that envelope in your mailbox, hell, even that night when you kicked me out…I already knew."

"What?" she demands in that soft tone.

"That something changed, that I can't…," he stops and starts again, "That it can't go back to how it used to be when we were partners." Elliot sighs and his fingers continue their play with hers.

"Is that why you didn't talk to me?"

"No. Not at first. I already told you that IAB were out to get you too."

"So… if I haven't driven to Queens, this…" Olivia tries to motion with her hand and ends up moving both their hands.

"Don't think like that," he says and strains his neck to look at her, "it was bound to happen. I couldn't break away either." He takes a deep breath and her head gently rocks with the motion of his chest and it's the first time he admits that he tried to break away, that part of his disappearance was a conscious decision, much like the one she took years ago, to put distance between them. It doesn't do much to assuage her guilt.

"I've known for years, but I wasn't sure," Elliot adds after a silent pause.

"About me or you?" she asks and she knows exactly what he's referring to because they don't need to state the obvious to understand each other.

"Both of us." His words draw a hushed cackle from her and in response his arm around her shoulder tightens and his fingers clutch hers. Now she knows for sure that she's done a shitty job hiding her feelings from him, probably because he knows her too well, and now she knows that he's felt the same, which somewhat explains the jealousy tantrums he used to throw. She decides to defer the 'since when', the 'how' and the 'what does it mean' questions to a later opportunity.

"Outside of the interrogation room you're not much of a liar, Benson." Elliot grins and she tries to hit him with her hand but it's held in his, and he laughs as he pulls her onto him and kisses her.

Things happen so fast and before she knows it Elliot has a side in her bed and a toothbrush in her bathroom, they have meals together and he uses her shower with or without her. She's been alone for most of her life, but Calvin, though she's had a limited amount of time with him, has taught her that having someone around is something she can live with, that she can even be good at it and that she's happier that way. And though Elliot is not a child but her married-ex-partner, it starts to feel more familiar than it does strange.

She doesn't miss him at work as much because she has him in another way; a fucked up way, but a way nonetheless. When they talk about work, she tells him about the cases and he understands like no one else can. He knows when she wants to talk about it and when she doesn't and which questions to ask. He knows when she just needs a hug and when she needs him to fuck the anger out of her system.

They learn new things about each other, like that they already know a whole lot about one another after thirteen years of entire days and nights spent together. Still, she learns that he's trained to put back down the toilet seat and that he snores if he sleeps on his back for too long. He learns that she uses a curling iron and that she likes to read while watching TV. She learns what his semen tastes like, and how she tastes on his lips. He learns that she still likes to hear about Eli but that the sight of his ring when he touches her makes her wince so he remembers to take it off. She learns that he can still get on her nerves and that he can be moody for no apparent reason but that she usually knows how to dispel it.

Olivia doesn't delude herself that this is normal. They don't really talk about it but she knows they're both thinking about it and she suspects that at some point it will all go batshit wrong with all the history and baggage they each carry; and she wishes it was as simple as just sex, but it's _Elliot_, and with him no rules apply. They're tied together in ways that have nothing to do with promises made at altars, promises made with words. She feels it in his arms, in their tight grip around her waist, in his hands on her back, pressing her to him. She feels it on her skin and in the way he touches her. She feels it in his mouth and in his voice.

She sees it in his eyes.

**TBC**


	13. Chapter 13

Sometimes they don't even make it to the bed. Or the couch. Sometimes they just fuck against the wall at the entrance to her apartment or against the closed door and then Elliot would put his palm or mouth on hers to muffle the cries she lets out when she comes. Sometimes they make slow love on her couch or bed or in her shower. Sometimes they do both.

And sometimes she wonders if this is what life has in stock for her, to settle for a part of a man who belongs to another. But she can't honestly say that she regrets Elliot, even when he goes home to sleep with his wife and she really doesn't need to know what that means though it's slowly killing her. She doesn't exactly know how he explains the late nights and the occasional whole nights or the half days on the weekend. She doesn't ask.

For several weeks Kathy Stabler is a constant being in Olivia's consciousness till one day she lands in her kitchen through Elliot's phone.

"Ok. I'll be back soon….I said I'll go with you." She hears Elliot's voice as soon as she opens the bathroom door, but her breath catches and the tingling numbness sets in the palms of her hands only when she steps out into the hall and grasps the full coherent sentences.

"Kathy, Kathy, I know. I told you, I'll be back soon, I'm….I will. Ok."

It's a Friday afternoon and she was able to get out of work after lunch, when he finished a consultation session at Andrew Higgins' offices in Manhattan, so they had half a day to be together. Now Olivia stands in the hall, fighting the urge to continue eavesdropping on Elliot's tired argument with his wife.

"Tell her that she doesn't have to." His voice is quieter and from the tiny hall she sees him standing at the kitchen sink, holding the phone to his ear with one hand and rubbing his forehead with the other, his head bowed down. "Listen, I have to finish, there are people here and I need to go."

Now she's _people_, she thinks, when he signs the conversation off with "I'll see you later".

Olivia is rooted to the floor, not quite sure what to do. She sees Elliot shutting his phone, placing it on the kitchen counter, frowning and rubbing his jaw.

Something inside her tells her to sneak into the bedroom before he notices her but she's fixed there, watching him massaging the back of his neck over the unbuttoned collar of his light-blue dress shirt. His tie is somewhere on her couch, where they made out earlier. She knows it's stupid that she's happy when they don't jump straight to bed and do other things first, like grabbing something to eat in her neighborhood or that one time when she agreed to Elliot's insistence to spend a few hours on a blanket in Central Park, talking, eating and napping in the last warm day of autumn. She remembers she was more afraid than he was to be seen by someone they knew.

He starts towards the bedroom and she wonders if he's going to lie to her like he's just lied to Kathy. "Liv," Elliot calls her name and she quietly retreats into the bedroom, opening a drawer just to look busy.

"Liv," he repeats when he reaches the room. He sighs before he speaks and she raises her head from the drawer to look at him. He rubs his jaw, gazing at her, and her heart slams in her chest in anticipation to hear him lie. "Kathy just called. I have to go soon. I'm sorry."

Olivia forces her face to remain neutral and it's ironic because his face is completely distraught, but if he knew that he has just made her twistedly happy, he'd laugh. "What happened?" she asks.

"I promised I'd go grocery shopping with her, we used to…I don't know why she's so stressed to go so early, there's less crowd later. It's stupid."

"Used to what?" she urges him on what he's obviously tried to disregard.

"Nothing. Go grocery shopping." Elliot shrugs dismissively.

"It's not stupid. It's…it's your family. They…she needs you…" Olivia manages to say. She wants to treat it as a mundane thing, but it's not, she knows that it's not.

"To go grocery shopping?"

"Yeah. That's a…that's…" she can't seem to finish the sentence.

"What about you?" Elliot asks as he leaves his spot at the doorway and advances towards her.

"What about me? I do my own grocery shopping." Last attempt to laugh it off, because she already feels the tears accumulating in the back of her throat.

"No, I mean…." Elliot takes a step closer to her.

"Elliot, go. It's ok." She turns her head towards the drawer again.

"Liv…" Elliot's voice sounds pleading and he moves to stand next to her, his hand on her shoulder, his head tilted in an attempt to look into her diverted face.

"I mean it, El. I'm fine. I understand." She really means it, or at least she thinks she does, and she tries to make her voice reflect it.

"No, you don't." Elliot's voice dips lower.

"Yes, I do," she insists. "Maybe it's you who don't understand." The words blurt out and Olivia knows that it's not fair that she's not looking at him.

"What?" Elliot's voice is sharp with surprise and his hand on her shoulder makes her turn to face him.

"This!" she snaps, "Grocery shopping! This is the real thing, Elliot, not _fucking_ _around _here." Olivia finally looks at him, her voice raises and she spits out the last part. "This,"she motions with her hand in the general direction of her room, "isn't real. Going grocery shopping with your wife _is_. I don't…I don't know what we're doing here," the sentence dies on her lips.

"We're not _fucking around_, and this _is_ real." Elliot's voice rises and he holds her by her shoulders.

"No, it's not, Elliot. _This_ is stupid, this is, not going grocery shopping. How long were you planning…I'm only asking you because I ask myself the same question. What do you…I'll never go grocery shopping with you…" Everything blends together as she frustratingly tries to express what's been on her mind for a long time. For years maybe.

"Liv, goddammit, leave the fucking grocery shopping alone, what are you saying?" Elliot shakes her shoulders because she evades looking at him again.

His breathing becomes shallow, labored, as he waits for her to answer him, his fingers digging into her.

"That any of this…" she finally raises her eyes to him, "I'm not gonna give you any of this." Her voice is calm but she feels the tears already in her eyes.

"I don't want this from you," Elliot says quietly, his eyes moving between hers.

"Right, because you already have that there and you have…I don't know _what_ you have here. Is that what you mean? This is why you don't want this from me?..."

"No! Liv,…" Elliot tries to interject, but she keeps going.

"…It's just as well, because I can't give you all that suburbs-lawn-mowing, grocery-shopping, kids-raising thing. I can't. And that's who you are, Elliot, I don't know who you think you are here, but maybe that's not you. Maybe it's just some piece…"

She stops for a moment because she needs to swallow the tears, to keep them from falling.

"Liv, you're wrong. I…" Elliot starts again but then she continues.

"Elliot, you would never do something like this to Kathy, to your family, and look at you…weeks and weeks of…" And she realizes that she's crying. Great, now she's crying. Because of a fucking grocery shopping.

"Weeks and weeks of what, Liv? Of what?" Elliot's voice is soft and stable and his hands slide to tighten on her biceps. "I'd never do….but this is you, Liv, this is _you_, and I am _me_ here, I'm _me_! This _is_ real and I don't need you to give me 'things' because I just want _you_. I just…I need _you_, Liv." He's never said this much to anyone, but it had to be said. He manages to pull her into him, his arms envelope her and he mumbles into her hair "God, baby, I want to give _you_ things."

"Well, you can't, Elliot." Her tears stop at once and she shoves herself out of his arms. "It's not your place to give anything here, you need to... _they_ need you." She looks into his eyes.

"And you don't?" The look on his face breaks her heart.

"Just, go, Elliot. We'll talk about this some other time." She lets her gaze fall from his again.

"I don't wanna go. What other time, Liv?" He searches her face, trying to hold her gaze.

"I don't know…some other…whenever."

"Liv, I'm coming back here tomorrow." He grasps her arms again as if to keep her from running, his voice is resolute, establishing a fact that won't let her evade him.

"No, don't." She brings her eyes to his face.

"Liv…don't do this." Elliot shakes his head and she sees the pleading in his eyes.

"I'm sorry, I can't do this anymore." She locks her eyes with his.

"I'm not going. I'm gonna call her and.."

"Don't call her, go home, Elliot." The quiet resolution in her voice scares him.

"Olivia." He stresses every syllable in her name and tries to pull her towards him but she recoils.

"Go grocery shopping today, El, we'll talk, I promise." The words come out tired, on a puff of air.

He watches her silently. "So that's it? One phone call from Kathy and you're done?" There's a tinge of anger in his voice.

"Maybe it was a wakeup call, for both of us. How long were we going to continue with this?" She feels like a hypocrite, because she knows he's been…_they've_ been lying for weeks, so why does she break now? Only because it was done from her kitchen?

"You don't know how things are," Elliot says, his eyes slightly narrowed and his head cocked as he's looking at her and it sounds like a question or a challenge.

"It doesn't matter," Olivia answers quietly.

They're standing near her dresser, silent, his hand on her arm, its heat burning into her, the scent of him fills her.

"You know what, you're right. You're right," Elliot finally says, his hand releasing her arm. "Bye, Liv," he adds and there's moist in his eyes that are locked on hers, and an image from years ago, of him staring at her at gunpoint with tears in his eyes, rips her heart open.

"Bye, El," she manages to whisper as he retreats towards the bedroom door.

He nods his head once and walks out of the room and soon she hears the front door closing behind him.

Olivia shuffles to the bed, sits down, and with her face buried in her hands she allows the sobs she's held inside to be born into the space of the room.

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She feels like a complete idiot when she purposefully walks over to the couch in hope to find that he's left his tie behind. He didn't, and it's for the better, because she doesn't need to hold on to his objects like a teenager; her own body, her own soul are part of him. Nevertheless, her hand automatically rises and grasps the Semper Fi medallion that is hanging on her chest.

Olivia sinks into the couch, wondering why grocery shopping was the straw that broke her, when all along she's been fighting the guilt over feeling that their tie defies logic and sacred laws. Maybe it's the images of him and Kathy picking up ingredients off supermarket shelves with Eli sitting in the shopping cart. Maybe it's the simple realization that he has an entire life that continues without her and that she can't have only a part of him anymore. Maybe it's the painful knowledge that she's borrowing another woman's husband, and not just a woman, it's Kathy, and it's not like her and Elliot to do that. And maybe it's the taunting question that crosses her mind from time to time - who is she kidding?

They're too different, she's not what he needs. Elliot has always held on to family and stability, and she's not it; Elliot is a dad, it's a big part of who he is, and she's not a mom, though at one point she was 'playing mom'. She can't give him all those things and he already has it at home. And Elliot and her, and Kathy and her, maybe they are worlds apart.

She doesn't want to replace his family and his suburbs, she just wants him. When they started this, she went on the pill again, just in case, thinking that despite the low chances that her age brings, the last thing she needs is a surprise sixth child for Elliot. He's never asked her if she uses anything, and using a condom with each other wasn't even an option, it's her and Elliot for christ's sake.

Maybe now he thinks that she is what he needs or wants, but soon enough he'll wake up and realize what he's giving up for her, and then what? She's not even sure that he's giving up on it for her anyway. Elliot asked her if she didn't need him, though he must know that she does, more than is healthy for any of them. She made him leave, for him, for her, for his family, but every nerve in her aches for him. Just him.

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"Idiot!" He spits out loud, and if he could, he'd give that son-of-a-bitch the finger but he needs to stabilize the car after almost crashing into that idiot's car. It's easier to blame that driver than to admit the tears that blur his sight. Elliot's hands clutch the Jeep's steering wheel and he makes sure to stick to his lane.

He can't give her anything. What was he thinking? And she needs, she _deserves_ everything. Instead he's been going on without thinking, maybe hoping that he's enough, a jaded man who is closer to fifty than to forty, with a marriage he's too paralyzed to deal with, with a fifth child who's still very young. What a shitty bargain to expect Olivia to settle for. But he couldn't stop himself, he's been holding back for years, more years than he should admit to, and when he's with her he is himself, more himself than he's ever been. She's always enabled him to be everything that he is, even a failure, while she's never allowed him to give up on making himself better; a better father, a better cop, a better man, a better husband; and he doesn't want from her anything that she can't give him, she's more than he deserves anyway.

He'd tell her that he loved her, but first of all she already knows that, he knows she does, just as he knows that she loves him, they don't need words for that; but more importantly, 'love' doesn't even come close to describe or explain what he feels for her. It cannot describe that in a visceral way he is her and she is him; it cannot explain that he spent thirteen years willing to get killed if it saved her and that it hasn't changed the day he retired because it's truer now than ever.

A loud honk startles him to watch the road in time to take the right exit. _'A wake up call'_ Olivia called it, and he wanted to tell her that he's actually been awake all this time. And that's probably what kills him the most, that he knows that what he's doing is wrong, but it feels so right and he can't break away from her, he doesn't want to. _'It's not you, you'd never do this to Kathy'_. For weeks he's been wondering how it came to be that it _is_ him who does this after nearly thirty years of marriage, in which he's never cheated on his wife, never, not once. But it is him. He's the one who stretches the truth and the work hours and the Quantico days, who invents excuses to go out of the house and drive to Manhattan to be with the woman his life depends upon although he's not a cop anymore.

When in Queens, Elliot calls Kathy from the car phone, asking her to come out to the car so he won't waste time getting into the house. He looks at himself in the mirror, rubs his face and slips the wedding ring back on his finger, and this time there's nothing to keep him from feeling like the worst low-life there is. Because now there's no Olivia to make it all worthwhile.

"Hi," Kathy's voice is irritable when she climbs into the car. "Glad you could finally make it."

"I told you I'd make it, and it's not later than when you usually go," he sounds and feels like crap.

"Maureen brings Eli back at seven and I have a lot to buy this week, that's why I wanted to go earlier. I told you yesterday but you weren't listening."

"Ok," Elliot sighs as he starts driving again, "let's just go."

At night he tries calling Olivia but she doesn't answer. "Pls pick up," he texts her. After a while, when she still doesn't, he texts again, "Good night, baby, try to sleep." _I love you,_ he wants to add, but doesn't, he can't just text her that.

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On the third day she flips the phone open to find a longer text. "Just text me back that you're ok. You're on the job and I need to know. If you don't, I'm gonna use the keys." Great time to be his bully-self, she thinks. He came over the day after their meltdown, like he had promised, but she made sure to not be home. "Please don't cut me out" was hand-written on the note he slid under her door.

"I'm fine," she texts him back now because if he comes over tonight she's not sure she'll keep the door closed when he knocks. She physically aches, she misses him so much that it becomes a palpable pain in her bones.

"You look like shit." A voice startles her.

"Thanks, John, I love you too." Olivia tries to smile.

"Need to talk?" Her smile probably doesn't fool him.

"No," she waves with her hand. "What?"

"Casey called. You and Fin, Briggs case, court on Tuesday."

"About time. It took forever."

"The wonders of delayed justice," Munch's sardonic smile makes her roll her eyes. "You and Stabler still friends?" he asks and the constant lump in her throat tightens and nearly chokes her. She looks at him questionably and he adds, "Casey mentioned he'd be there on Tuesday too."

"Ah, ok, sure." She's not going to get caught on this.

When John clears the area she leans her elbows on her desk, intertwines her fingers and presses her lips with her knuckles, releasing a deep breath and closing her eyes.

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

It only gets worse, she thinks, as she watches Elliot sleeping on the sofa. His massive frame looks almost vulnerable and she doesn't feel like waking him up and coping with his moroseness again. For weeks he's been sleeping mostly on the sofa or in Maureen's old room, telling her that he doesn't want to wake her with his sleeplessness. But it's not only that, she knows it, because he's different, though she can't quite put her finger on it. The past week has been the worst she remembers, he's been so quiet to the point that it scared her, at least till their loud argument during the weekend.

It's Monday morning and he's due in Manhattan, if she doesn't wake him he'll be late. Kathy takes a deep breath, ties her blonde hair up and moves closer to the sofa, to shake her sleeping husband's shoulder.

Right and wrong and chances and mistakes, it's all meshed together in his head as he's driving to AVG offices in Manhattan. It's been over a week since he's seen Olivia, and her "Elliot pls stop, for all of us" text from Friday, which she sent after he had tried calling her and texting her that it'd been a week and that he needed to see her, broke what seemed to be left of him.

He was putting his phone down, debating if to show up at her apartment again and bang on the door till she opened it or use his keys or heed to her request to stop this altogether, when Kathy entered the kitchen and spoke to him and he hardly listened. Funny how his phone made shit hit the fan with both Olivia and Kathy.

"Elliot, where are you? Have you heard a word I said?" Kathy asked him when he stopped staring at his closed phone on the kitchen counter.

"Yeah, garage door, stuck again, I got it." He was thankful he got that much.

"Good. But really, Elliot, where are you? Where have you been?" Concern and accusation mixed in her tone.

"Here. What…?" He mumbled, too engrossed in the painful hole at the left side of his chest, where his heart used to be.

"For weeks, for months, Elliot, I… Are you even here?" Kathy suddenly sounded tired and that made him look at her, really look at her, and Olivia's _'for all of us'_ kept flashing in his head.

"I am. I'm right here." He tried to assure her.

"Are you? I don't think so."

"Kathy, let's just…let's not go back to that again." His voice was just as tired as hers.

"Go back to that? Oh, right, I forgot, you don't even argue with me."

_Dammit,_ he sighed and rubbed his face. He didn't feel like arguing with her, he had no energy left, but she was right and she didn't deserve that from him.

"I want you to fight with me about this, Elliot, but you don't even fight anymore, right? You just took yourself away." Her voice was raised because of his silence.

"I'm here, Kathy, aren't I?" He finally said though he knew it wasn't true, not really, and that she wasn't a fool to believe that.

"You're here? Maybe your body is here. But you know what, I'm not even sure if that's true anymore."

His breath almost audibly caught at this, and for a moment there he wanted her to know, he wanted to get this over and done with, but instead he just gave her another half-lie. "I'm here. I…I need to get used to this life, to not being a cop."

"It's not that, Elliot, I know you."

"Kathy, just…tell me what you want me to do and I…" He tried to dispel it although it felt like they were both just chanting the mantras they were used to for years.

"What do _you_ want, Elliot? What do _you_ want? I don't want some empty shell of a marriage, empty shell of a husband who doesn't know what he wants; or knows but refuses to…Admit it, Elliot, you left a long time ago."

He looked at her, standing near the kitchen table where she started cleaning after Eli, who was already asleep in his bed, and he hoped that the sounds of their fight didn't reach his room.

"I want to do the right thing, Kathy, for us," he said quietly after a short pause.

"I don't want you to do the _right_ thing," Kathy said calmly. "You know what, it's not even noble anymore."

"Kath," he said though he had no idea how to contradict her. She was right, it wasn't noble anymore, and she was much braver than him, to admit, to demand, to tell the truth.

"Are you just waiting for me to walk away too?"

"I don't…I don't want you to leave." He meant it, though he wasn't sure if for the right reasons.

"Why? What's going to change, Elliot?" Kathy crossed her arms over her chest.

He was silent because they'd been through that so many times in the last decade and he learned not to make promises he couldn't keep.

Kathy spoke instead. "We've been through this before and nothing changed, only now you're not even angry anymore, you're just…nothing changed then and nothing is going to change now. If it wasn't for Eli…"

"If it wasn't for Eli, what?" That made him jump.

"If it wasn't for him, _I_ wouldn't have come back last time. You wanted to be back, and by the time I considered it, you already changed your mind, didn't you? But then you had no choice." She was right, but there was no point in talking about this for the sixtieth time.

"Are we really going to talk about this now? I came back, Kathy, that's all that matters."

"No, it's not, because you did the 'right thing' and nothing is right here."

"You asked me to come back and I'm still here." He did come back but maybe he didn't try hard enough to make it work, and his failures were crushing him.

"If it wasn't for him I wouldn't have asked you. Tell me that you're happy that I did." She looked at him defiantly.

"I'm happy that we had Eli." His son was the one thing that he could swear by.

"That's not what I'm asking, but just…forget it."

"Kathy, I'm here now, let's just…" He couldn't finish the sentence because he didn't know what to say. All he could think of was _'pls stop, for all of us'_.

She just nodded and walked out of the kitchen, and he knew that he should follow her and hug her and try to make it all go away, but he couldn't. Not yet. He couldn't because the shit is so deep that he got to the point where he can't touch her without feeling torn, he can't touch his own wife without remembering how Olivia's body feels against his. He can't touch her when his heart is in that apartment in Manhattan with her.

He tried. A few nights earlier, he walked into their bedroom to take another blanket because he spilt coffee on the one in Maureen's room, and Kathy was there and helped him find it, and when he was about to leave, she reached her hand and touched his chest. He stood there like an idiot because they hadn't touched each other intimately in months and when she started stroking his chest and leaned in to kiss his neck, he froze before he gently placed his hands on her shoulders and stopped her. She looked at him and all he could say was 'Kath, I have tons of work.' He kissed her forehead and stroked her cheek and she looked at him in a way that made him feel like he didn't deserve to live.

Elliot parks the Jeep, and right and wrong and chances and mistakes are still meshed together in his head, and everything is volatile as he tries to figure out how he's going to continue from here. He knows what he wants, what he needs, but he also knows what he has to do. He owes it to Kathy, to their past, to his kids, and to Olivia, because she expects him to.

And tomorrow he's due in court. Olivia is too.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N:** There's a quote in this chapter from U2's "Red Hill". Another quote from that song was stuck in my head as I wrote:_ "I can lose myself. You, I can't live without_".

**Chapter 14:**

It's completely fucked up in every way she looks at it. All this time she made sure to avoid him, but knowing that she's going to see him soon makes her masochistically glad. Not jumping-up-and-down glad but she has a little more space to breathe.

The past twelve days all meshed together; she spent even longer hours at work, used her energy to break suspects, but she also nearly broke one victim when she raised her voice at her and accused her of lying to them. The only thing that differentiated and signified each day was Elliot's calls and texts and his attempt to see her.

She measures more than days by him, she realized, everything is split to before they were partners and after, before she fell in love and after, before she slept with him and after, before he left and after.

Before and After. _Elliot_. She wonders if she'll ever have another measurement to go by.

"Hey, you want to wait inside or wait out here till I call you?" Casey's vigorous voice makes Olivia raise her head and meet her gaze.

"Go ahead. Fin's gonna be here any minute, I'll wait for him out here," she replies.

"Ok, see you then," Casey mutters and walks into the courtroom.

The wooden bench is uncomfortable and she's too jumpy anyway. Olivia stands up and paces the corridor. Avoidance and running away; how could she ever imagine a normal relationship with Elliot when all they do is take turns at hiding from each other?

"Morning," Fin greets her and she's drawn out of her musings again.

"Morning. Was waiting for you."

"Wanna go in or wait for Elliot?"

"Um, let's go in," she starts saying because it's the right thing to say.

"You know what, we have some time and I need coffee."

They walk over to a larger hall where a vending machine is located. They get two cups of crappy coffee and Fin inserts more coins and buys a third cup. "For Elliot," he explains and she purses her lips in a tight smile.

When they're back in the corridor outside the courtroom, he is already there, pacing back and forth in a dark suit-pants and a gray dress-shirt, which she remembers stripping off of him in one of their nights. His suit jacket and coat are thrown on the bench.

Taking in the sight of him, Olivia's heart widens and constricts at the same time and the result is that she feels it pulsing in her throat. Elliot turns towards them as they approach and his eyes lock with hers.

"Morning," Fin smiles, "here," he extends the coffee cup to Elliot and she imagines how weird they must look, because Elliot takes the cup from him but his eyes are on her and he diverts them in Fin's direction for less than a second before they lock back on hers.

"Thanks," Elliot mumbles and Fin must feel the almost physical boundary that leaves him outside in their trio, because in the periphery of her vision Olivia notices that he looks between them and sways on his feet.

Fin shifts again and his elbow brushes against her and this startles her out of the blue gaze. She lowers her eyes to the cup in her hands, opens the plastic lid and takes a sip.

"Ready for this, Stabler?" Fin asks.

"Ready as always." Elliot smiles and looks at both Fin and her.

"I have a feeling we're gonna find Karen after this is over and I hope it's not going to be too late," Fin sighs.

"It's never too late when it's right," Elliot says before he takes another sip off his coffee.

Olivia raises her eyes to look at him because she knows what he's doing. She grits her teeth but Elliot doesn't look back and they all stand there quietly for another minute.

"C'mon, let's get inside." Fin gulps what remains in his cup and walks to the bin by the bench, leaving Elliot and Olivia a few feet behind to face each other.

They look up from their coffees, their eyes briefly skimming each others' faces, making a quick inventory to memory of all the painfully familiar features, before their eyes lock together again. Elliot presses his lips together and a small sad smile breaks on them and she feels hers curl in response.

Elliot reaches his arm towards her and she hands him her half empty cup and their fingers brush when he takes it. He walks over to throw their cups and she uses the opportunity when his back is to her to take a deep breath, before the three of them enter the courtroom together.

Fin seats himself between them, but Olivia can feel Elliot's proximity almost as if he were sitting next to her. There's something inside her that integrates with him over the physical boundary, something that gets pulled to him despite her own self-will and judgment.

She testifies and she can feel his eyes on her from the back of the room. Elliot goes on the stand too and she watches him doing something that they've both done so many times before. It's not a long process, but she can see everything that's behind his confident voice and smirk when the defense attorney tries to dismiss his credibility due to his retirement circumstances. She feels like smacking the sonofabitch for defending a shit psycho by undermining the man who made sure many of those wouldn't see the light of day.

They don't stay for the next proceedings. They all walk out as soon as Casey gives them the hint and Fin pats Elliot's back and turns to her. "Meet you at the House?" he asks.

She has no idea what he knows or suspects but she's glad that Fin is Fin and that he knows they need space. "Yeah," she responds and they watch him leave before they look at each other again.

"Thanks." Elliot looks at her and the blue of his eyes is warm, so warm.

"Don't thank me, El, this isn't easy for me either," she says and her voice is strained.

"I know. I just didn't want to end this the way…you know…" He's standing there and she can see herself reflecting in his eyes and this is it, she realizes, this is them saying goodbye, and maybe it was better the way they usually did this, just cutting if off.

"Yeah…" she blinks. "Walk me to my car?" She asks and her voice fluctuates despite herself.

Elliot gestures with his head, his eyes tired and soft.

They don't talk on the way to her car, their stride is in synch as always, their shoulders brush, and between Elliot's testimony in court and him in a suit and his black wool coat and her with the gun holstered to her hip, she is thrown almost a year back, although the past months have changed it all.

"Olivia," he starts when they reach her car in the cement multi-storey car park.

She stops in front of the driver's side door and turns. Elliot advances and stops to stand so close to her that the open lapels of his coat are enveloping her legs and hips, and there's nothing that she wants more than to crawl into him and etch him into her again. He's so close that he needs to crane his neck to look at her.

"Let's talk inside," she manages to say when his thumb grazes her cheek.

Elliot's jaw clenches and he circles the car to the passenger's side. They climb into the car and she drops the keys near the shifter and stares at it.

"Liv," Elliot takes her hand in his, and his touch, she has missed his touch so fucking much. She remembers the time they sat in the Mustang outside his house and how she yearned for him to talk to her and touch her and it's like with him the yearn never stops.

She looks at his face, at the rough lines and edges that are him, as he twines their fingers together, the palm of his right hand on the back of her right, his thumb stroking her. Her gaze falls on the hand that's left limp on his thigh, she can't see the glint, but she knows the ring is there.

"Nothing changed, Elliot. This still isn't right," she forces herself to say although every nerve in her screams for him to stay, to hold on to her, to not give her up, and if she has been able to somehow remain in one piece in the days since Kathy's call, she feels like she's fragmenting now.

Elliot looks at her, at the smooth brown hair that falls to her shoulders, and he knows that she relates to his words from the courthouse corridor, and he can hear Kathy's words and he's sick and tired of the right thing. Because sometimes there's a huge difference between doing right and feeling right and this is what has always threatened to take over him - that he could feel right about doing wrong, especially when it comes to her. _'pls stop, for all of us,'_ Olivia's plea from Friday echoes in his head.

"_Everything_ changed, but you're right," he finally says and as much as she practically sent him back, his words still crush her.

"Will you be ok?" She needs to half whisper, because there are tears that make their way to her eyes.

"I don't know." Elliot replies, though he doesn't know if she means him or his family but the answer is the same anyway. "You?"

Olivia turns her gaze to the front windshield. "I'll be fine."

"Liv," he rasps and he knows that he doesn't have to add anything because she'll understand. She'll understand that if she says one word, just one word, he'll blow everything to hell just to be with her; he tries although he knows that she won't say it and that she won't let him.

Olivia closes her eyes and with her left hand she motions him to stop, and he knows that they're done. "I don't regret this," he says and his palm squeezes hers.

Elliot shifts his gaze too, and this time instead of watching a quiet, dark suburban street, he stares with her into a day-lit, cement-walled lot, but just like then the air in the car suffocates her with loss and proximity. And as if he's thinking about the same thing, Elliot pulls her by her hand and they pivot towards each other, he catches her in his arms and she hangs on to him, her fingers dig into the fabric of his coat. His breath is in her hair and hers is exhaled into the nook between his shoulder and cheek, and as much as she fights it, she sinks. He's only flesh and blood but he's also Elliot and her lifeline.

He can't let go of her, he can't; but he has to. Elliot lets himself hold her a little longer before they both loosen the grip and pull back a bit, his fingers still touch her silky smooth hair and he skims her face. He leans in and kisses her mouth and for what seems to be a beat or infinity they taste each other again.

Elliot's hands are still on her when they break their kiss and he gazes into her eyes. "I love you," he rasps and in her eyes he reads that she understands just how small this word is.

"I know," she half whispers, "me too." Olivia's voice is thick with tears and he wishes his heart were still a hole in his chest, but next to her it's not, it's right there, throbbing.

They both lean further in and their lips meet, and when they kiss again she tastes him and swallows the salty tears.

"I have to go." Elliot's voice reverberates though it's quiet and gravelly.

"Go," she manages to say and her fingers release his shoulder.

He caresses her cheek again and his hands slowly let go of her before their eyes disconnect as he climbs out of the car.

Olivia doesn't wait, she picks the keys up and starts the car, driving towards the exit.

And it's like falling hard after being highly intoxicated, because now she knows what it's like to be with him, to feel him, to be loved by him, and now she has to learn to live without it, without him; and if there was a void in her before, it is now infinitely multiplied and she needs to overcome it again.

She's back in the precinct and it's the fear or the void or both that cause her to bend over the toilet and hurl coffee, tears and emptiness into it.

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

"Olivia, feeling any better?" Her Captain's voice penetrates the silent apartment through her cellphone speaker.

"Need me to come in?"

"No, just checking in on you. We're managing for now, though Munch really wants you back, the field is not his thing anymore," Cragen tries to joke.

"I'll be in tomorrow."

"Take your time, don't worry about him, just get back when you really feel better."

A virus. That's what she told them when she couldn't get out of bed the day after court. It was three days ago and she starts feeling better, the daylight that comes through the shades isn't offensive anymore, she feels like she could eat and when someone calls she picks up the phone. It's ok, it's normal, she tells herself; it has never happened to her before but then again Elliot has never happened to her before either. _Elliot._

He hasn't called and it's good because it means that they're both committed to do the right thing and with time she'll be fine. She will, she has to. There's so much work to do, it never ceases. Cragen will never say it, but she knows they need her and tomorrow she'll go back to work. She'll use today to get her act together, take a shower, wash her hair, buy some food, arrange the apartment.

Today she'll start another 'After' – After Elliot.

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

It's been two weeks. Two weeks of not seeing Olivia, of not being with Olivia, of feigning life without her. He tries to be normal, but what is normal? When was his marriage ever normal? He tries to feign something based on something that wasn't quite it for almost a decade. _Years_ in SVU were mostly work and hardly home and barely talking to his wife about the things that really interested or bothered him, but the house was full of kids and he wanted his family. _Months_ of limbo after the shooting were mostly arguments and sleeplessness and estrangeness, with only Eli as an escape. _Weeks_ with Olivia were totally betraying on his marriage while learning what life and love could be for him.

The only time in the last decade he could somehow believe was normal was the year he came back home after he had found out that Kathy was pregnant with Eli. He did his best then, tried to focus more on home, tried to fix his relations with Kathy, and to some extent he was successful, but it didn't last long, otherwise he wouldn't have ended up in same place again. Eli was just a baby when he started sloping back to the old routine. Back then he couldn't admit that the day his fifth child was born had something to do with it, because on the surface it should have had the opposite effect, only it didn't; what happened that day slapped him into finding Olivia again.

After court he went home, volunteered to pick Eli up from pre-school and spent the entire afternoon with him. The next days were a blur, but he was more at home, even talked to his wife about how he felt dealing with a case again. They had a brief conversation about it that ended with her practical "I can imagine, but it's behind you now. I'm sure one day you'll miss training too."

He started sleeping in their bedroom again, although usually he goes to bed so late that Kathy is already asleep by then. Tomorrow he starts another four-days session in Quantico and Elliot is looking forward to getting away from this city, away from everything.

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

"So you just thought it would be a good idea to revenge your sister's divorce by attacking her husband's mistress like that?" She hears Nick ask the red-headed woman on the other side of the glass.

"She's my twin sister and that bitch made him leave her with three kids. Three kids! Do you know what my sister went through?" The woman is in tears, yelling her answer at Amaro.

"How did you plan this?" Olivia hears Amanda's accent drawl.

"I didn't plan this. I went nuts when I heard he moved in with that slut, so I went there to talk some sense into him and then I…" The red-head starts crying again and Olivia turns to Cragen who stands next to her.

"I think we have what we need, I'll go talk to Alex," she says.

"Good, thanks," Cragen replies and she leaves her spot and heads toward the bullpen.

It's all about the grays. This job has taught her that it's all about the gray areas. It's not all black and white and right or wrong, it's more complicated than this. She is not _that_ woman, she tells herself, but she can't avoid thinking about Elliot's and hers descent to a full-blown affair. It's been three weeks and it's strange that the guilt has set in with all its weight only after everything ended. It's heavier especially when she gets reminders, like today, and in her job there are many days like this one.

She gets by, one day at a time, that's all she can take right now. Sometimes there are noises outside that make her heart jump because she thinks she hears his footsteps or knock on the door, and then she scorns herself for being weak.

_'We steep so low to reach so high_,' a song plays on the car radio later, and she fails forcing back the huffed scoff that escapes her lips, which makes Nick look at her questionably.

"Nothing," she smiles and waves her hand dismissively, "I just like this song." Nick smiles back and she makes a note to self to focus on the road.

Right, wrong and gray. Olivia isn't lying to herself, she knows she'd do it all over again.

_**TBC**_


End file.
